ear. The enterprise supplies bread and butter to more than
twenty thousand mouths, and is without a serious rival in its chosen
field.

If the horse tribe could speak, it would arise and whinny paeans to the
name of Oliver, joining in the chorus of farmers. For a moldboard that
always scours gives a peace to a farmer like unto that given to a prima
donna by a dress that fits in the back.

* * * * *

While James Oliver was not a distinctively religious man, yet many
passages of Scripture that he had learned at his mother's knee clung to
him through his long life and leaped easily to his tongue. One of his
favorite and oft-quoted verses was this from Isaiah, "And they shall
beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks:
nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn
war any more."

The Big Idea of chilled metal for the moldboard of a plow, probably had
its germ in the mind of James Oliver from this very passage of
Scripture.

"When Cincinnatus left his plow in the field to go in defense of his
country, his excuse was the only one that could pardon such a breach,"
he once said.

Oliver hated war. His bent was for the peaceful arts; for that which
would give fruits and flowers and better homes for the people; for love,
joy and all that makes for the good of women and children and those who
have lived long. James Oliver loved old people and he loved children. He
realized that the awful burdens and woes of war fall on the innocent and
the helpless. And so the business of converting sword metal into plow
metal made an appeal to him. Being a metal-worker and knowing much of
the history of the metals, he knew of the "Toledo blade"--that secret
and marvelous invention with its tremendous strength, keen cutting edge
and lightness. To make a moldboard as finely tempered in its way as a
"Toledo blade" was his ambition.

He used to declare that the secret of the sword-makers of old Toledo in
Spain was his secret, too. Whether this was absolutely true is not for
us to question; perhaps a little egotism in a man of this character
should be allowable.

Cast-iron plows, as well as the steel plows of that date, were very
heavy, wore out rapidly--the metal being soft--and didn't "scour,"
except in the purer sands and gravels. The share and moldboard quickly
accumulated soil, increased the "draft," forced the plow out of the
ground, destroyed the reg