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The special gift to give in 1906?  A Springfield-made manure spreader

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By Tom Stafford, Staff Writer 9:32 PM Sunday, December 12, 2010

In 1906, as weather turned cold, the first ground-covering snow arrived, and the holiday drew nigh, a special kind of man could imagine, parked out in his yard on Christmas morning, the vehicle of his dreams: a brand new manure spreader.

If the illustrators Currier and Ives failed to pick up on this romantic holiday image — a potential forerunner of the Budweiser Clydesdales pulling a beer wagon — it was no fault of the E.W. Ross Company of Springfield, Ohio, makers of Little Giant Implements.

Founded in 1850 and located in a spot ideal for rail shipping at Warder Street and the Cleveland, Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis (or Big Four) Railway, the company offered solid reasons for buying one of its 50-, 70- or 100-bushel spreaders during the season to be jolly.

“A machine of this type is used largely during the winter months,” points out a 1906 sales brochure. And having operated for 56 years, Ross knew this end of the business well.

Not only was winter the time when farmers took to their corn fields to fertilize, its brochure tells us, but wintry conditions presented a challenge for designers, “as breakage is more liable to occur in the cold weather.”

Steel driving dogs

The Ross approach to building a vehicle that could handle the stress of a big load being pulled over unforgiving frozen ground was to pair sturdy construction materials with a balanced design, so as to limit the wagon’s “draft.”

In this case draft means not the wind associated with the passing of a manure wagon, or the pull on a tap to bring forth beer, but the force required of draft horses to pull a wagon and its contents along.

“The frame or bed is made of hard maple throughout and bolted at all joints (then), reinforced by malleable angle irons to avoid loosening or coming apart,” says the booklet, which is stored in the Quirk Collection at the Clark County Historical Society.

The spreader had wide tires to accomodate the load, sturdy steel “driving dogs” in the gearing and ball bearings to move the chains that fed the manure backwards.

Five Henry County, Ill., farmers who had seen it in action on the J.H. Shumaker farm heaped loads of praise on the spreader.

“It worked perfectly in every respect; was light in draft and convenient, and easy to operate, and distributed horse manure, cow manure and cobs in good shape.”

“It was working in about two inches of snow, and had plenty of traction power without the use of lugs on any wheel.”

If testimonials like this printed in a separate company pamphlet seem sincere, a glance at the names of some of the writers raises suspicions.

— Like Frank Pulls of Hoskins, Neb., George Pullin of Mason Co., W. Va., sounds like the name of a draft horse that might have been hitched to a spreader.

— The advertising staff couldn’t have made up a better firm name to endorse the product than the North Industry, Ohio-based “Wise Brothers.”

— Fan mail from W.H. Hogg of Point Pleasant, W.Va., surely must have tempted the ad copy writers to compose the headline “Hogg endorses manure spreader.”

The company chose instead to take a strong stand in favor of, if not on, manure itself.

Dissing the dung-fork

“We ... take for granted that every farm, while differing one farm from another in the quality of soil, is always benefited by the judicious use of fertilizers, and especially that in the form of barn yard manure,” the sales booklet says.

“It was to get at the problem for the economical distribution of this valuable fertilizer that the Ross Manure spreader took its beginning.”

Although with the advantages of being free and plentiful on a farm with livestock, manure, we are informed, does not come into the world ideally shaped for use as a fertilizer.

“It has been proven by experience that manure thrown on the field with a dung-fork is of necessity put on unevenly.” (Nor, of course, does a dung-fork make as fine a Christmas present.)

The brochure also argues that even the most savvy dung-fork operator is at a disadvantage.

“The large chunks not being broken up, much of (the manure’s) richness does not find its way into the soil for at least two or possibly three or four years.”

There were, in short, practical and aesthetic drawbacks to dung-fork technology.

“A machine ... to properly handle the barn-yard manure must be so arranged that the beater or pulverizer will completely disintegrate the material and spread it evenly over the land.”

Enter modern agricultural sciences.

Solid waste geometry

In what sounds vaguely like a postulate of solid waste geometry, the advertisement posits this: “The cash value of the manure increases in proportion to the amount of pulverizing which it undergoes.”

The cylinder mounted on the back of the Ross spreader was the heart of its pulverizing system — a system that could slice and dice, if not puree, manure and was of strong enough constitution to avoid the vexing trouble of spreader constipation.

“The cylinder has long spikes which in connection with the speed at which it revolves makes it practically clog-proof, even under the most difficult conditions.”

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