Yes, you could plow with them, if you wanted to, but it was cost prohibitive. Just supplying the beast with the water and fuel to keep it running required more horses than it took to plow the field. It required more men, to run the machine and run the teams of horses. They were also colossally heavy and very expensive.
But ultimately, since your whole thesis relies on the notion that the south was unable to mechanize farming until it did because the mean ol' yankees looted the massah's house and he couldn't afford it, why then did farming in the north, midwest and west not go to tractors until the 1910s, when internal combustion tractors came along? Could it be because they were cheaper, lighter, and required a whole lot less more technical knowledge and risk (since they didn't blow up like steam engines could).
Also, please explain how the labor-intensive process of chopping cotton (distinct from picking, as I'm sure you know) would have been made less labor intensive by mechanization, when, in the REAL WORLD, it was the development of herbicides in the 1940s the eliminated the need for it.
Contact Dr. Lubar yet?
do you not know that KNOWLEDGEABLE people here are laughing AT you? don't you care???
i notice that you also didn't mention the mule-drawn cottonpickers/cultivators, that were pulled by 8-12 mules and required the labor of ONE man. is that because you aren't informed enough to know about them OR don't you care that your rant is FACT-FREE???
free dixie,sw