attention should be concentrated on the causal factor, the cheapness of land. The high price of labor may have affected the calculations and management of the farmers in the few favored regions, such as the towns in the neighborhood of Boston, but it is difficult to see how this condition could have had any significance for the farmers in inland towns. To farmers who never hired any labor, what difference could it make whether the price of labor was high or low? For the ordinary operations of farm life, directed only to supply a single family with the necessaries of life, the labor force of that family was sufficient. To spend any amount, however small, in hiring labor to raise a surplus of crops or live stock for which no market could be found would have been economic folly.

The cheapness of land, on the other hand, was a matter of vital importance. In a new country where land is cheap we naturally expect to find an extensive system of agriculture. When, however, a country, or a section of it, becomes fully settled, as New England was in 1810, an increase in population demands an increase in the supply of foodstuffs. Under an extensive or a predatory system of cultivation, a stage of diminishing returns is soon reached at which this increased supply can be obtained only at a more than proportional expense of labor and capital. Two courses are then open to the farmers. Either they must send the surplus of their population to new lands in another section of the country, or, if such lands are unavailable, they must if possible amend their methods, introduce improvements and so postpone the stage of diminishing returns. At any rate, an increased product must be forthcoming; either emigration will ensue or a more intensive system of cultivation must be adopted. Now it was the presence of large tracts of uncleared land, of as great if not of greater fertility than that which the farmers of inland towns were then cultivating, to be had almost for the asking, which persuaded them to choose the former of these alternatives.

Emigration.

Emigration began from the older towns before 1750, first to the as yet unsettled counties in the northern and western sections of Massachusetts, and after the Revolution to the states of northern New England.1 Thus the annual surplus of population was drained off and the remainder managed to get a living without introducing new methods of agriculture. Tudor describes this process and its

'For a fuller consideration of the amount and direction of emigration in this period, see Appendix B, pp. 383 ff.

results as follows: "The spirit of emigration, acting with full force on an enterprising people, easily induced them to go to new states in pursuit of the real or delusive advantages that were held out to them. This constant draining from our population, while it afforded a hardy, vigorous race for the cultivation of new territories; may have produced a greater increase to the ultimate good and power of the nation, than would have happened if these emigrants had remained stationary; still it occasioned some local disadvantages. In the first place it prevented the inhabitants from thinking of any improvement; if their farm was not sufficiently productive, the easy remedy to a restless people was to sell it, collect their effects and go five or fifteen hundred miles (the distance, greater or less, was not thought of) in pursuit of a richer soil. It was not by the employment of greater skill, but by a change in location, that they sought to improve their condition."

The Real Cause of Inefficient Agriculture was the Lack of a Market for Farm Products.

The ignorance and the conservatism of the farmers were undoubtedly to some extent hindrances to agricultural progress; cheap land on the frontier discouraged intensive cultivation at home; but these circumstances do not, either alone or in combination, furnish a sufficient explanation for the state of the industry which prevailed. In the background lay a condition of much more significance, because of its determining force upon all the others. I refer to the lack of a market for agricultural products. Once given a market, neither ignorance of the improved methods of agriculture nor the reluctance to experiment along new lines, proceeding from a conservative disposition, nor the cheapness of land, inviting extensive cultivation, could long have stood in the way of progress. If the farmers of the inland towns had had an opportunity to exchange for the products of the outside world their grain, meat and dairy products, they would have seized upon every scrap of information regarding the means by which their fields and live stock could be made more productive; their adherence to traditional methods would have been weakened, and they would have applied to the conduct of agriculture the same adventurous and ingenious spirit which they displayed in the field of mechanical invention and in that of commercial enterprise. Labor might still have been expensive, yet they would have employed others to work for them. The expense of labor was at this time a hin

1 Letters on the Eastern States, pp. 234-235.

drance to the growth of manufactures, also, but when the market was opened through the failure of European competition, during the period of the Embargoes and the War of 1812, manufacturers found it profitable to employ workers even at the high wages demanded.

In fact we have repeatedly noted in the preceding sections of this chapter that wherever a body of farmers were so situated as to be able to reach a market, whether in the commercial towns of the seacoast or in the West Indies, there these obstacles to progress had already, to some extent, been overcome. Dickinson recognized this fact when he wrote: "Our farmers prefer exerting their labor upon a large field, to employing the same on a small one. Deviating, however, from this rule, in the vicinity of populous towns, and on navigable waters, where the price of land enters more highly into the farming capital, they have paid more attention to husbandry, and increased their produce by additional expenditures of labor." Had this author carried his analysis only one step farther and asked himself the question, "Why is the price of land higher in the vicinity of populous towns and on navigable waters?" the answer would have given him a much more fundamental reason for the improvements which he observed. It was the presence of a market, an opportunity to sell produce, which increased the competition for these lands, which made the farmer willing to pay highly for the opportunity of entering that market.

On the other hand, all other stimuli to agricultural improvement were futile as long as the market was lacking. We have seen that the campaign of education of the latter part of the eighteenth century was without results. It is difficult to see how a cheaper labor force could have produced any different results. The revolution in agriculture, as well as the breaking down of the self-sufficient village life, awaited the growth of a non-agricultural population. Between the years 1810 and 1860 such a population arose in the manufacturing cities and towns of New England, and the market thus created brought changes which opened up a new era to the farmers in the inland towns.

' Geographical and Statistical View, p. 8.

CHAPTER VI.

HOME AND COMMUNITY LIFE IN THE INLAND TOWN.

At the conclusion of the survey of economic conditions in southern New England in 1810 which occupied the first four chapters of this essay, we ventured the statement that the most important circumstance determining the life of the inhabitants of inland towns was the lack of a market. In the preceding chapter the assertion has been partially justified by an examination of the effect of this circumstance, this commercial isolation of the inland town, on the agricultural industry carried on by its inhabitants. It remains for this chapter to consider to what extent the peculiar characteristics of home and community life in these towns were also dependent on the same cause. The best place to look for the influence of a market, or the effects of a lack of it, is in the everyday life of the farmer himself. If our reasoning up to the present has been accurate, we should expect to find him unable to sell more than a trifling amount, if any, of the produce of his land, and consequently unable to purchase goods to any considerable extent from the outside world. He and his family must have constituted very nearly an economic microcosm, a self-sufficient household economy, supplying their wants almost entirely by their own labor, except for occasional neighborly coöperation, and relying hardly at all on the exchange of products or services with outside communities.

The Self-sufficiency of New England Farms.

The facts, as far as they can be learned, give ample support to this deduction. It would naturally be expected that, given the soil and climate of New England which lend themselves to the cultivation of a variety of food products, the farmer would be able to provision his family from his own land, but the extent of this self-sufficiency is somewhat surprising. Dwight tells us1 that flesh and fish were the principal food of the inhabitants of New England. A more concrete description of their fare is that given by Felt: "For more than a century and a half (i.e., up until almost 1800) the most ' Travels, IV. 341.

of them had pea and bean porridge, or broth, made of the liquor of boiled salt meat and pork, and mixed with meal, and sometimes hasty pudding and milk-both morning and evening." Except for the salted cod which made a favorite Saturday dinner for families a considerable distance inland, the use of fish was probably confined to the seacoast regions and to towns along the rivers where fishing was regularly carried on,2 as a by-industry of agriculture. Beef, pork, and mutton were all supplied from the farmer's own flocks and herds. He was often his own butcher, although at times he called upon some neighbor for this service. Owing to the lack of facilities for refrigeration most of the meat was dried, salted or pickled, operations performed by the women of the household. They also supplied the table with butter and cheese, and tried out the lard used in cooking.

The common bread of the country people was made of a mixture of Indian corn meal and rye flour ("rye and Injun"), ground at the local grist-mill from the farmer's own grains. Wheat bread was in common use only in the seaports, whither the grain was brought from the Southern and Middle states, and in the region west of the Connecticut River, where the soil was best suited to the cultivation of this grain. Fruits and vegetables grew everywhere in as great a variety and abundance as the farmer could find time to plant and cultivate. The orchards were especially important for their supplies of cider, the favorite drink of the country population.

5

Not only these staples of diet, but even some of the condiments which made them palatable were supplied from the farm. The business of making sugar and syrup from the sap of maple trees was a regular department of the routine operations of inland farms.

1 History of Ipswich, p. 30.

2 Supra Chapter II.

3 A somewhat irregular supply of fresh meat was obtained by the practice of slaughtering an animal in alternation with one's neighbors and distributing parts of the carcass to the several families. A quarter of beef or mutton, or a side of pork could be consumed by a single family before it spoiled, whereas a large part of the meat would have been wasted, if not preserved in some way, had it all remained in one household. This practice still obtains in country districts. It is one of the few surviving remnants of the various forms of coöperation which were necessary in those days.

4 Supra p. 303, note 5.

Warden, D. B. Statistical, Political and Historical Account of the United States of North America. 3 vols. Edinburgh. 1819. Vol. I., p. 329, estimates that corn and rye bread was eaten by four-fifths of the inhabitants of Massachusetts. See also Dwight, Travels, I. 340.