Agriculture was not a Means of Making Money.

Equality in distribution would, under the circumstances, naturally be expected. The lack of a market meant production by each family or village unit simply for its own consumption. "The house was a factory on the farm, the farm a grower and producer for the house." Except in especially favored regions, agriculture was not a commercial business; there was practically nothing raised for sale. Hence the opportunities for business profits, for the accumulation and investment of capital, all of which are necessary steps in the development of inequalities in wealth, were lacking.

The conditions of land tenure and the uniformity in the size of the farms are both proofs of this contention. It is well known that almost every farmer owned his own land, tenancy being found in only a few localities.2 The farms varied in size from 80-100 to 250300 acres, few having less than 100 acres and few more than 200.3 Occasionally we find instances of families in the older inland towns distinguished from their neighbors by the possession of considerable estates in land, enabling them to have more of the refinements and comforts of life and even some of its luxuries. Such instances, however, were exceptions to the general rule of plainness and frugality.

' Bushnell, The Age of Homespun, p. 392.

2 Dwight found some tenancy on the Connecticut coast, east of New London. In Stonington, for instance, he found about half of the farms cultivated by tenants, who were, however, in that position only until they could obtain enough capital to purchase land for themselves. Travels, III. 16. See also Tudor, Letters from the Eastern States, p. 406.

The practice of holding land in common, at least pasture lands, which was often introduced at the settlement of a new town, seems to have died out in most localities before the Revolution. In Ridgefield, for instance, the common lands were divided in 1760. Goodrich, Statistical Account, p. 9. See also Doyle, J. A., English Colonies in America. 5 vols. New York. 1882-1907. Vol. V. p. 16. The practice seems to have survived longest, in the Island of Nantucket and in Plymouth and Barnstable Counties in Massachusetts. See Kendall, Travels, II. 208-210; also Adams, H. B., The Germanic Origin of New England Towns, Ch. II.; and Village Communities of Cape Anne and Salem, Chs. IX. and X.; both in Vol. I. of Johns Hopkins University Studies in History and Political Science. 3 For a fuller discussion of this point and authorities see supra pp. 321–322. The author of American Husbandry writes, Vol. I. p. 62, as if the English system of cultivation by tenant farmers of land of large proprietors was not an uncommon thing in southern New England before the Revolution. Such a system may have prevailed occasionally in regions of active internal trade (as in Windham County, Conn., see Larned, History of Windham County, II. 270, and Kendall, Travels, I. 315), but there is no evidence that it existed throughout isolated rural communities.

Land was Cheap, Hence no Class of Wage-Earners.

And yet the acquisition of a moderate amount of land was not a matter of any great difficulty. Tudor writes: "Every industrious man may look forward with certainty to becoming proprietor in fee simple of a small farm." This ease with which land could be acquired was one of the principal causes of the prevailing equality in the distribution of wealth, and in fact, with the lack of a market, was a factor determining the whole character of the economic life of the population of New England at this time. In the first place, it brought about that phenomenon of high wages which was so often commented upon by travelers and other observers, native and foreign. It was naturally hard to persuade a young man to work for day-wages when he could so easily establish himself as an independent farmer. This fact, together with the lack of a market, effectually prevented the rise of a body of agricultural laborers. Even in regions where a market was accessible it was difficult, at what were then considered extravagant wages, to obtain a labor force for commercial farming. In other districts there was little demand for such labor. The self-sufficient farm furnished its own labor force, the farmer and his sons being in most cases quite well able to raise the crops and to care for the live stock which provided food and clothing for the family. It would indeed have been poor economy to hire laborers to raise a surplus which could not be sold. Exceptional tasks were accomplished by the voluntary coöperation of neighbors. Occasionally a farmer's son would hire out for a few years to a neighbor, but such service was always looked upon as temporary, as merely a means of accumulating sufficient capital to establish the young man as an independent farmer. And just as among the independent artisans in the country towns there was no regularly defined, per

3

1 Letters on the Eastern States, p. 405.

? These observations were in many cases concerned with the difficulty or impossibility of establishing manufactures in the colonies or, later, in the states. See Franklin, Benjamin. Canadian Pamphlet, in Works, Sparks edition, IV. 19, 40-41. Also American Husbandry, II. 257-267.

3 Harriott, Struggles through Life, II. 193–194, tells of his unsuccessful efforts to get laborers to work on a farm on Long Island.

* Livingston, American Agriculture, p. 338, says: "Most of our farmers cultivate their farms with their own hands, aided by their sons when of proper age to be serviceable. Women labor in the harvest, and in haying, and in planting corn, before they are mothers, but seldom afterwards." See also Dickinson, Geographical and Statistical View, p. 8.

manent body of hired workmen, so also there was no class of agricultural laborers.1

Paupers-Cost of Poor Relief-Causes of Poverty.

These facts, showing the wide distribution of the ownership of land, and the resulting lack of a permanent labor class, lend support to the general statements of contemporary writers concerning the equality in the distribution of wealth. They would seem, also, to lead naturally to the inference that there could have been little if any extreme poverty and little need for poor relief in these inland towns. Such an inference would be, however, not strictly in accord with the facts. Poverty did exist and the sums appropriated each year by the towns for the support of the paupers were large as compared with the other items in their budgets.2 This poverty, however,

'Tudor says of "the hired people," Letters on the Eastern States, p. 405: “These latter were seldom born, and seldom died, servants; they served for a time, till their wages would enable them to begin clearing land for a farm." Dwight, also, has a significant paragraph on the character of the labor force in New England. He says: "We have in New England no such class of men as on the eastern side of the Atlantic are denominated peasantry. The number of those, who are mere labourers, is almost nothing, except in a few populous towns; and almost all these are collected from the shiftless, the idle, and the vicious. A great part of them are foreigners. Here every apprentice originally intends to establish, and with scarcely an exception actually establishes himself in business. Every seaman designs to become, and a great proportion of them really become, masters and mates of vessels; and every young man hired to work upon a farm, aims steadily to acquire a farm for himself, and hardly one fails of the acquisition.” Travels, IV. 335.

* In the six towns of Middlesex County, Conn., the expense of poor relief varied from $400 to $1,700 in 1814, amounting on the average to a per capita tax of $0.366 (Field, Statistical Account of Middlesex County, p. 23); in Litchfield, Conn., there were 38 paupers in a population of 4,500, whose annual support cost $1,500 in 1811. (Morris, Statistical Account of Litchfield, p. 107.) The figures quoted by Adams, Episodes, II, 729, 912-913, for Quincy, Mass., seem quite exceptional. Here the expense of the poor increased from $1,000 in 1812 to $1,665 in 1813, being equal at the later date to the combined appropriations for the church and the schools. During the six years 1808-1813 the total amount of taxes raised in this town was $18,200 and of this over one-third went for poor relief. The population of this town was 1,300 in 1810. In the town of Kingston, in the same county (population 1,300 in 1810), the expense of poor relief averaged only $600 at this date. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., II. 3: 215.

In interpreting these figures allowance must be made for the expensive practice of farming out the town poor, which regularly prevailed. Only in the largest towns, such as New Haven and Middletown in Connecticut, had almshouses been erected. The best contemporary description of the various methods of poor relief employed is found in Field, Op. cit., pp. 22-24.

was of a different sort from that to which we are accustomed nowadays. It was not primarily, nor to as great a degree as at present, due to economic pressure, or to maladjustments in the industrial system. It was comparatively easy for any able-bodied person of energetic disposition and temperate habits to earn a tolerable subsistence. The paupers of that time included principally that class of persons whom we now class as unemployable; the mentally or physically incapable, the insane and the feeble-minded, the cripples, the orphans and the aged. There were no insane asylums, orphanages, homes for incurables or for old persons; consequently these unfortunates, if no relatives were present who were able or willing to support them, fell on the town for support. And besides these there were those who had become enslaved to the current vice of drunkenness.1

The Vice of Intemperance-Its Causes.

"The intemperance of the colonial period," says Charles Francis Adams, "is a thing now difficult to realize; and it seems to have pervaded all classes from the clergy to the pauper."2 We have already remarked the large consumption of cider in the farmers' families and have commented upon the importance of the retail sale of stronger liquors in the business of the country stores and taverns. Every important occasion in home or church life, every rural festivity was utilized as an opportunity for generous indulgence in intoxicants. Neither the haying-season in early summer, nor the hog-killing season at the end of autumn could be successfully managed without the aid of liberal potations of "black-strap" and "stone-wall." Husking bees, house-raisings, training days, and even christenings, burials and ordinations were often disgraced by the drunkenness of participants.3

1 The Rev. Mr. Goodrich wrote of the town of Ridgefield: "The number of poor who receive aid from the town do not excede 10 or 12 of which number 2 or 3 receive their whole support. we have no poor that are chargeable but what become so by bodily imbecility." Statistical Account, p. 17. On this point Tudor wrote: "There are few persons here, who can suffer absolute distress from poverty. That which arises among the wealthier classes, from great reverses, I am not considering; but an uncertainty about the common means of subsistence can never happen in the country, except to the miserable drunkard, or the unfortunate victim of some bodily or mental infirmity, who of course are supported by the public when destitute of friends; the labouring man, with good health and good habits, may always obtain the comforts of life, and increase his savings.' Letters on the Eastern States, p. 407.

2 Episodes, II. 785.

3 See Adams, Episodes, II. pp. 783-794. The annual numbers of the Old Farmer's Almanack are full of admonitions against drunkenness. See also Harriott, Struggles through Life, II. 205-206.

The craving for stimulants with its disastrous results on the fortunes of individuals and on the general moral tone of the community proceeded partly from the coarse and unvaried diet of the farming population, and probably to a larger extent, from a desire to relieve at least temporarily the dreary monotony of village life. There are always two opposing views current among the older generation concerning the relative virtues of their early days as compared with the conditions which they see about them in their declining years. Some look back to a sort of Golden Age and view all the features of the past through rose-colored spectacles. Others with a more optimistic frame of mind are quite willing to admit that the passage of the years has brought improvement along many lines and do not hesitate to glory in the progress that has been achieved under their eyes during a long life. One of the best sources of information concerning the character of social life in the inland towns a century ago are the memorial discourses delivered upon the centennial and other anniversary celebrations of the inland towns and of their churches. In these discourses we find both of the opposing views presented. There are probably elements of truth in both, but as far as the general features of social life are concerned and their effect in stimulating or in depressing the individual, the latter view seems to be more in accord with the facts as we know them.

The Rev. Mr. Storrs, in reviewing a pastorate of fifty years in the town of Braintree, Mass., said: "And when it is remembered that fifty years ago, and for many after years, no post office blessed the town, nor public conveyance for letters, papers, or persons, was to be had, even semi-weekly, except through villages two miles distant; that but for the occasional rumbling of a butcher's cart, or a tradesman's wagon, the fall of the hammer on the lap-stone, or the call of the plowman to his refractory team, our streets had well nigh rivaled the graveyard in silence, it can scarcely surprise one, that our knowledge of the outer world was imperfect, nor that general intelligence and enterprise was held at a discount; and if powder, kettle drums, and conch-shells, proclaimed the celebration of a wedding; or if wine, and 'spirits more dangerous than any from the vasty deep,' were imbibed at funerals to quiet the nerves and move the lachrymals of attendants; or if rowdyism and fisticuffs triumphed over law and order on town meeting, muster and election days, it was but the legitimate outflow of combined ignorance and heaven daring