The Graham Collection - Graham Plow: Saves the Soil, Demonstrations

Duration: 0:33:40

Year Published: c. 1950s

Format: 16mm

Sound: silent

Description: This footage from an unfinished industrial film demonstrates the use and efficiency of the Graham Plow. The film includes images of various sizes of plows, pulled by various brands and types of tractors (as well as one pickup truck) and on many different types of soil and terrain. The demonstrations take place at locations from the Kickapoo Prairie Tractor School in Springfield, MO to the small town of Silverton, TX for audiences from potential buyers such as farmers to children on a school trip. Touted as “the plow that saved the Plains,” the Graham-Hoeme Chisel Plow helped control the effects of wind erosion during the seven-year drought of the 1950s. William Thurman Graham began manufacturing the machinery in Amarillo, Texas, in 1938. After finding that standard tandem-disc plows left turned land flat, Graham was one of two Amarillo-based manufacturing companies that developed chisel plows with spring shanks that left crop residue on the surface, thereby reducing the risk of wind erosion.