As a field for a study in economic history no region offers better opportunities than do the three states of southern New England at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Here we find an "economic province," a territory of uniform life based upon a uniform physical environment, peopled by a homogeneous race, with common descent, common traditions, and common institutions. This uniformity of conditions gives the student the great advantage of being able to draw general conclusions for the whole region from the evidence presented in typical localities. He has, moveover, the advantage of investigating an approximately static condition in economic life. For at least a generation, there had been practically no change in the manner of life of the inhabitants in most of the towns. In many of the older towns there had been little change in 50 or 100 years. The process of pioneering was finished, practically all of the land which was then considered available had been brought under cultivation; in the current phrase, these states were "fully settled." But a great change was impending; soon the familiar, stereotyped ways of doing things, traditional habits of life and of thought were to suffer modification and in a few generations were to disappear almost entirely. The revolutionary force was to come from the rise of manufactures and the growth of a nonagricultural population in the inland towns. It is peculiarly interesting and instructive to examine the economic and social life of these communities at this critical stage in their history.

The general plan of the essay may be outlined as follows: In the first place an analysis of the occupations of the inhabitants of the inland townships will be undertaken. Not only will the relative importance of each trade, business, and profession be determined, but also the nature of the relations existing between each and the agricultural industry will be considered. In other words, this portion, Chapter I, will be devoted to a study of the extent of the Division of Labor in the inland townships.

The second step, Chapter II, will be to determine how far the inland communities thus described were typical of the whole region of southern New England. A search will be made for industrial and commercial towns and the commercial relations between these and the purely rural towns will be considered.

In Chapters III and IV an attempt will be made to find out how far these rural communities engaged in commerce with the inhabitants of regions outside New England. An investigation will be made of the extent of the demand for foodstuffs in the Southern

states and in the West Indies.

To determine how far this market

was supplied by farmers in inland towns, an examination of the conditions of internal trade and of the transportation system in southern New England will be necessary.

Thus far we have been employed in describing the economic conditions, in reconstructing the environment in which the inland farmers found themselves. The second part of the essay, Chapters V and VI, will be devoted to describing the state of the agricultural industry as carried on by inland farmers, and the general features of life in the home and in the community. Finally, these facts will be brought into relation with those of the economic situation that we have described in the first four chapters.

CHAPTER I.

THE INLAND TOWNS AND THEIR VILLAGE SETTLEMENTS.

The typical inland township in southern New England in 1810 was an area of roughly 40 square miles,1 containing a population of from 1,000 to 3,000 persons. An examination of the Census of 1810 shows us 385 of such towns, out of a total of 437. Of the remaining 52 towns only three2 had as many as 10,000 people, 11 had between 5,000 and 10,000 and 38 varied from 3,000 to 5,000. More significant than these figures as showing the predominant importance of the smallest towns is the fact that 67 per cent, or more than two-thirds of the total population, lived in these; one-quarter in towns of from 3,000 to 10,000 people, and only about one-sixteenth of the total number in the largest towns. Within the group of the smallest towns, considerable variations in size were to be found. In newly settled or in unfertile regions, such as Berkshire and Worcester counties in Massachusetts, a large proportion of the towns contained from 500 to 1,500 people. On the other hand, in especially fertile districts, as, for instance, in the Connecticut valley,4 or where an old town had retained a large grant of land unsubdivided, as, for instance, Farmington and Saybrook,5 the population ranged between 2,500 and 3,000 or above. On the whole, however, we shall find that all the towns in this group which we have selected as the typical inland towns show characteristics which set

'The variations from this norm were considerable, especially in the longer settled regions where the older towns had been often subdivided. Some of the towns, also, had acquired and kept unusually large grants of land. Consequently, towns as small as 20 square miles or as large as 70 are sometimes found. The best source of information as to the area of towns at this time is Pease and Niles, Gazetteer of the States of Connecticut and Rhode Island. Hartford. 1819. We have no similar work at this date for Massachusetts, except for individual towns and counties. E. g. Whitney, Peter. History of the County of Worcester. Worcester (Mass.). 1793.

2 These were Boston, 33,250; Salem, 12,600; and Providence, 10,000.

3 For fuller statement of these figures see Appendix A.

4 There were 16 towns along the Connecticut River from Saybrook to Springfield, only two of which had less than 2,500 people.

Both of these towns contained about 70 square miles and profited besides by their location in the Connecticut Valley.

them off more or less distinctly from the small number of larger towns and so justify the classification.

The Villages.

A part of the inhabitants of the inland towns lived in villages, small groups of houses often surrounding the meeting house on the top of a hill in the center of the town, or lying stretched out along a single broad street, or enclosing an open square at the intersection of two highways; the remainder lived in farm-houses scattered over the area of the town outside the village. It was these village settlements which, as President Dwight so clearly pointed out,' distinguished southern New England from the Southern states as well as from the frontier regions of the northern parts of New England and from the new communities in the Western states. Resulting originally from a need of protection from the hostile natives and also from the desire to have dwellings convenient to the place of religious worship, these villages became a traditional part of New England life and served to foster the growth of a communal spirit. They made possible compulsory education of children and in general prevented the degeneration in manners and morals which inevitably follows as a consequence of dispersion of people in a new country.2

From the point of view of the economic life of the inhabitants, however, these villages were not significant. In the first place, they were not large enough to include any very great proportion of the entire population, and, besides, the occupations of the village dwellers were essentially the same as those of their fellow-townsmen. As regards the size of these villages, contemporary writers have given us an abundance of information. In 1781 Chastellux referred to Lebanon, Conn., as one of the most considerable towns, i.e., villages, in the country (in the rural inland region.) It had 100 houses which were somewhat scattered. The same writer found 50 houses around

1

Dwight, Timothy. Travels in New England and New York. 4 vols. London. 1823. I. 300–303.

2 The importance of the services rendered by the country churches in furnishing a social center can hardly be over-emphasized. A clear statement of the nature of these services is found in Adams, Charles Francis. Three Episodes in Massachusetts History. A Study in Church and Town Government. 2 vols. Boston. 1892. II. 750-751.

3 Chastellux, François Jean, Marquis de. Travels in North America. 2 vols. London. 1788. I. 455. Another French traveler who passed through this town a few years later found 150-160 houses in the village. See La RochefoucauldLiancourt, Duc de. Travels through the United States of North America. 2 vols. London. 1799. I. 515.