farmers are very sparing, rarely giving two ploughings if they think the crop will do with one; the consequence of which is their products being seldom near so great as they would be under a different management."

Although usually resentful of foreign criticisms, Dwight is forced to admit that "the husbandry of New England is far inferior to that of Great Britain." He adds: "The principal defects in our husbandry, so far as I am able to judge, are a deficiency in the quantity of labour necessary to prepare the ground for seed, insufficient manuring, the want of a good rotation of crops, and slovenliness in clearing the ground. The soil is not sufficiently pulverized nor sufficiently manured. We are generally ignorant of what crops will best succeed each other, and our fields are covered with a rank growth of weeds."2

Farm Management in 1800.

Postponing for the present an examination of the reasons for this inefficiency in the fundamental occupation, let us examine the routine operations of the farmer in the inland communities, in order to determine as nearly as possible how far these criticisms were justified.

Size of Farms.

The 100 to 200 acres which composed a typical inland farm3 were divided into three roughly equal tracts, one-third being woodland, including wasteland, one-third pasturage, and the remainder divided between mowing lands and cultivated fields in varying proportions. The land under tillage, however, hardly ever exceeded ten or a dozen acres, except in the neighborhood of such commercial towns as would

3 On the matter of the prevailing size of farms there is an abundance of evidence. See Dickinson, Geographical and Statistical View, p. 7; Livingston, Robert R., American Agriculture. Article in the Edinburgh Encyclopedia. First American edition. 18 vols. Philadelphia. 1832. Vol. I. pp. 332–341. The facts in this article apply particularly to the Northern and Eastern states; many of them are taken without credit from Dickinson's work. This article was written shortly before the author's death in 1813. See De Peyster, Frederick. Biographical Sketch. New York. 1876. p. 13. The advertisements of farms for sale in the columns of the Massachusetts Spy (Worcester) in the year 1807–1808 show variations in acreage from 50 to 275 acres. But of the total of 24 farms advertised, only four had below 100 acres; 18 were between 100 and 200 acres, and only two had more than 200 acres.

furnish a market.1 These fields were separated originally by rail fences or stone walls. In places where timber was beginning to be scarce the latter material was most generally used. When the farmer and his sons piled up these monuments of laborious toil they were accomplishing a double purpose, not only marking off the boundaries of their fields, but ridding their land of a great hindrance to cultivation as well.

The Importance of Indian Corn.

Indian corn and rye were the staple grains cultivated on every inland farm. The first might have been called the cornerstone of New England agriculture. Next to grass its yield was more valuable than that of any other crop. Dickinson says of this crop: "Indian corn may justly be considered as our principal grain, and the most valuable in the whole circle of husbandry. Its increase, compared with that of any other grain, is in a greater degree independent of the season, and governed more by the attention and care of the cultivator. It is mixed in the proportion of one-third, with rye, and constitutes the common bread of the inhabitants. The beef, pork, and poultry, fattened with it, are greatly superior to such as are fed on any other grain. Besides the crop, the average of which is about twenty-eight bushels per acre, the forage it affords is very considerable, every part of the stem and husk being applicable to the feeding of cattle."2 Dwight says that this crop is "nearly as valuable to this country as all other kinds of corn united, and yields a crop much more certain, and much more extensively useful than any other." Besides its advantage of hardiness which made

1 According to the answers received by the Massachusetts Agricultural Society to their questionnaire of 1806, the farms in Brookfield, an exceptionally prosperous inland town in Worcester County, were divided as follows: Pasture, 33 acres; mowing, 20 acres; tillage, 6 to 7 acres; orchards, 3 to 4 acres; and woodland, 33 acres. A considerable contrast is seen in the case of Brooklyn (now called Brookline), a town adjacent to Boston, which benefited by the market in that place. Here we find a typical farm with 100 acres, of which 12 were in woodland, 20 in pasture, and 68 in mowing, tillage, and orchards. Papers, Vol. II., 1807. pp. 11, 12.

2 Geographical and Statistical View, pp. 8-9.

Travels, II. 62. In another passage, II. 294, Dwight catalogues and describes ten varieties of maize grown in New England. Other writers who recognized the importance of maize in the agricultural economy of New England were the author of American Husbandry, who calls it "the grand product of the country on which the inhabitants principally feed," I. 50, and Livingston, American Agriculture, pp. 334-335.

it surely dependable,1 and its general utility to man and beast, this crop was peculiarly adapted to a region in which labor was expensive. The system of planting in hills at the corners of a four or five-foot square, which the colonists had learned from the Indians, rendered cultivation by cross-plowing feasible and so reduced the necessity of hand hoeing.2 This is probably the reason why this crop was given more careful cultivation than any other. Besides rye which, combined with Indian corn, furnished the flour for bread, oats, barley, and buckwheat were regularly sown in small amounts. Both the oats and barley were recognized to be poor crops,3 but still they were necessary, and therefore, under the self-sufficing system of agriculture, they had to be grown. The buckwheat was a useful crop in many ways. Its value in cleaning the fields of weeds was already recognized and it was also occasionally ploughed under to serve as a "green" fertilizer. The blossoms furnished food for the farmer's bees and the grain was used as a food for poultry.4

Why the Wheat Crop Failed.

Wheat could not be successfully grown except in a few favored regions in New England, such as the valley of the Connecticut River and the western portions of Massachusetts and Connecticut, in Berkshire and Litchfield Counties.5 Other grains, as we shall see, yielded poor enough results, but the results of wheat cultivation were so disappointing that it was early abandoned in most regions

'In the answers received from the farmers in reply to its questions, the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture printed the following: "From Worcester, it is remarked, that the crop of Indian corn is the most uniform, and the one on which the farmer can most securely rely; and it is alleged, that it is the only one well cultivated in our country, and that for all these and other reasons it is thought the most useful." Papers, II. 18.

2 See Livingston, American Agriculture, p. 335. He says further: "Ten acres of corn are hoed with less expense, than one of beans or turnips, The practice of sowing pumpkins in among the rows of corn, to which this writer in another passage refers, would have interfered somewhat with the cultivation of the corn.

Of oats and barley the author of Notes on Farming says, p. 18: "I have not mentioned oats, because in this country it is a contemptible crop and scarce worth raising; barley being far better even for the feed of horses." The author of this thirty-eight page pamphlet, printed anonymously in New York in 1787, was Hon. Charles Thompson, a member of the first Continental Congress and of the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture.

4 See Livingston, American Agriculture, p. 334.

Salisbury, in Litchfield County, was especially noted for the successful cultivation of this grain. Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, p. 258.

altogether. Besides suffering from the inroads of the Canada thistle and the Hessian fly, it was repeatedly damaged by a sort of fungus growth, known to the writers of that time as blast, rust or mildew. Many attempts were made to explain this last phenomenon, which, as the investigations of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture later proved, was really caused by the use of unselected, infected seed.1 Dwight went to work systematically to fathom the mystery and after examining and discarding such alleged causes as the character of the soil, the climate, and the "noxious effluvia" from barberry bushes, he concludes that the damage must proceed from the use of stable manure as a fertilizer. This, he believed, forced the growth of the plant too rapidly in its early stages.2 Harriott, the English traveler, came much nearer to a correct solution of the problem. He wrote: "In some of the farther inland parts, wheat is raised; but on the sea-coast, it has never been cultivated with much success, being subject to blasts. Various reasons are assigned for this: some suppose these blasts to be occasioned by the saline vapours from the sea; but I can not agree to this, well knowing that many of the best wheats that are grown in England in quantity and quality, are from sea-marshes and lands adjoining the sea. Others attribute it to the vicinity of Barbary-bushes of the truth of which I can not speak. But the principal cause appeared to me the poverty and sandy nature of soil in general, together with exceedingly bad management."

The Lack of Root Crops.

One of the greatest defects in the system of husbandry practiced in New England was the lack of root crops. Such crops, especially the turnip, were being extensively used in England as a winter food for cattle, making possible the keeping of more animals and in better condition, besides securing for the farmer a valuable addition to his supply of stable manure. The potato was, to be sure, culti

1 Massachusetts Agricultural Repository and Journal. Published by the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture. 10 vols. Boston, 1793–1832. Vol. V., pp. 132-150. The first two volumes of this collection include the.contributions to the Society, published as annual papers. Referred to in later notes as Mass. Agric. Soc. Papers.

2 Travels, II. 322–329. Kittredge, The Old Farmer and His Almanack, pp. 322-332, has a chapter entitled Barberries and Wheat, in which he discusses the difficulties encountered by the farmers of the period in attempting to grow this grain.

Struggles through Life, II. 32-33.

vated to some extent, and principally as a food for cattle. Although indigenous in America, it seems not to have been well known until the early part of the eighteenth century. By the end of the century almost every farmer cultivated from one to four or five acres of potatoes, not in a separate field but along the borders of the corn or other grain fields. Occasionally we find turnips and carrots mentioned2 but their cultivation had not become at all general. A cheaper substitute for root crops which was used to some extent for winter fodder was the pumpkin. Planted in the hills of corn, it required no extra land to be cultivated and grew abundantly without attention. In the fall after the corn had been cut and shocked the pumpkins were easily gathered. Although they could not be preserved as long as the root crops, yet while they lasted they furnished a fairly good substitute. Hay remained throughout all this period, however, the chief winter fodder for all sorts of live stock.3

Flax was not a crop especially suited to New England at this time, since it required an amount of labor and fertilization inconsistent with the prevailing extensive system of cultivation. Yet flax was necessary for the production of the homespun linen and tow cloth and hence a small field, probably only a fraction of an acre, was regularly sown. A part of the flax was allowed to ripen and although this practice made the fiber less suitable for textiles, yet from the seed thus secured linseed oil was obtained. This, as we have seen, was in some regions a commercial product.*

5

The smaller vegetables, such as peas, beans, onions, etc., were

' Belknap, History of New Hampshire, II. 37, credits the Scotch-Irish families who settled Londonderry, New Hampshire, in 1719 with the re-introduction of this plant from Europe.

2 As in Goodrich's Statistical Account of Ridgefield, pp. 5-6.

3 The best contemporary discussion of the methods of planting and preserving pumpkins is found in Notes on Farming, pp. 20-21. Colonel Taylor, of Virginia, considered pumpkins a much superior crop to either turnips or potatoes, in spite of the advocacy of the latter in the English treatises with which he was familiar. The results of his experiments he published in a series of essays entitled Arator. (3 ed. Baltimore, 1817), pp. 115 ff. The bulk of this work was written before 1810. 4 Mass. Agric. Soc. Papers, II. 1807, 41-42. In Fairfield County, Connecticut, the export of flaxseed had assumed some importance, the surplus over consumption amounting to about 20,000 bushels a year. The result of this outlet was a considerable specialization in the crop. Dwight says: "A few years since (ca. 1800) more flax was raised here than in the whole of New England beside." Travels, III. 499-500.

5 The two towns which exported onions to any extent were Wethersfield, Connecticut, and Barnstable, Massachusetts. Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, p. 9; Kendall, Travels, II. 129.