The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1896-02-28
I wish to congratulate YOUR cum.

wish to congratulate your com.
mittee for its wisdom, in recognizing
the subject of sub-soiling as one of the
necessities of scientific farming. The
trend of farming is from extensive to
intensive farming, and many old
slovenly methods must be abandoned
and new scientific ones adopted, chief
among the latter is the new process
of subsoiling, more properly called
sub-breaking.
Subsoiling is no new thing, but has
been tried and abandoned years ago,
but SUBJ breaking is new thing and
should not be contounded with the
subsoiling of the past. 1t used to be
the custom to pillow with a IA inch
pillow and Immediately follow in the
same Through with a 12-inch pillow,
turning the hard under soil:out on top
of the plowed land, to bake and him
der planting, This was not subsoil-
ing, but simply deep blowing, and
more of the hard clay soil was turned
out at one sweep, than ought to
have been done in ten years of plow-
ing. We all know how pernicious
this must have been, and we do not
wonder at subsoiling receiving d
black eye, and the plows were aband-
onsd and allowed to rust out, and the
agricultural press set it's foot down on
subsoiling.
The new process subsoil pillow, or
sub breaker, is simply 13-inch steel
wedge, about inches long, that is
run along in the ground at anHdepth
up to "a inches, either with or with
out surface blowing, followed by a
standard that is in turn fastened to a
beam, which with its handles and
clevises, form the new process sub
pillow. No earth is thrown out at all,
it simply breaks up and destroys the
solidity of the hard under soil. To
more fully comprehend the action of
the pillow on a very hard undersoil, let
US imagine that we have pit dug in
the ground about shoulder high, and
that the surface was composed of a
little soil, underlaid with water-tight
and air-tight coal that had not been
disturbed for ages past. Now, we
take wedge and insert it in the hard
coal, about "a inches from the surface,
and sledge away at it. Do we expect
the wedge to cut hole like q wad-
cutter, or turn up groove like car
penters' growing plane? Of course
not. We know that continued ham,
mering on the wedge will cause a
seam to open up in the coal parallel
to the length of the point of the
wedge. This seam will grow larger
and larger until the coal opens up a
crack just above the wedge and run
ming up to the surface. We all under
stand why this is, and expect this 10
be the case. Now, suppose our
wedge was made so that we could
screw on an additional handle and
continue to force the wedge in, and
that, in order to help US, we have at
tached to the wedge an upright STAN
dard that extends out of the ground |
far enough to allow US to hitch on a
team to help us. We continue to
sledge away on the wedge, and the
wedge travels further and further in
to the coal, and the seam continues to
open up in front of the wedge, and the
crack up to the surface continues
head of the wedge. How is it posi- |
BILE for the wedge to throw up any |
soil to the surface? The point of the
wedge will have enormous friction,
but the standard meets with no re-
sistance and cannot possibly throw
out any soil. Now put man on the
surface to drive the team, and he
walks on the open crack, will be not
rattle down some surface soil, instead
of bringing any up? AS the seam
and crack will receive more or less of
this fine soil, are they ever going to
get back where they were? If We
drive another wedge two feet away,
and another between these two, will
we not break up and destroy the
solidity of the whole surface above
the wedges without throwing any
soil out? Wouldn't the coal now be
broken up, and contain a large
amount of water as soon as it rained ?
If the surface sloped towards the pit,
would not the pit be found to be a
spring constantly fed by water that
formerly had run off into the creeks?
AS soon as we subsOil our lands and
secrete our annual rainfall just where
the Creator intended it to be, our
springs will fail to go dry, our creeks
will be full, timber will start up, and
all nature will be changed for the bet
ter; the surplus water that formerly
ran off and caused disastrous floods,
death and destruction, will now sink
into the soil and subirrigate our CROP