recklessness. Those days are passed and shame throws its thick mantle over them."1

Tendencies Toward Social Degeneration.

An isolated community always tends toward social degeneration, and the drunkenness, rowdyism, and general coarseness of manners of the inland towns at this time were but premonitions of the more disastrous results which might be expected from economic and social stagnation. At no time in these communities was there a distinct criminal class, of the type now technically known as degenerate; but petty crimes, stealing, assaults and disturbances were of frequent occurrence.2 There are many indications that the influence of the church was decadent. Up to the beginning of the nineteenth century, the ecclesiastical organization had secured, by means of a censorship of the private life of its members so inquisitorial as to seem nowadays intolerable, fairly submissive adherence to a rigid code of morality. With the decline in the authority of the church in matters of doctrine came also a weakening in its control over the conduct of its adherents.3

Another cause of laxity in morals, of probably greater importance, was the general spirit of lawlessness spreading over the country after the Revolution, which seems especially to have affected the country districts. The soldiers returning from the war found it hard to settle down and get their living honestly in the previous humdrum routine. They brought back with them new and often vicious habits which the rest of the community imitated. Then, in the interval between the overturn of the regularly constituted colonial authori

' Fiftieth Anniversary of the Ordination and Settlement of Richard S. Storrs, D.D., Pastor of the First Congregational Church in Braintree, Mass. July 3, 1861. Boston, 1861. pp. 32-33.

2 The records of the town courts, where accessible, are a rich source of evidence on this point. See Wood, Sumner Gilbert. The Taverns and Turnpikes of Old Blanford, pp. 188-205.

3 Dwight, Travels, IV. 380, writes: "Crimes, to a considerable extent are now practised, avowed, and vindicated, are made the materials of a jest, and gloried in as proofs of ingenuity and independence, which our ancestors knew only by report, and of which they spoke only with horror. Inferior deviations from rectitude are become extensively familiar, and regarded as things of course." The cause which the writer ascribes for this state of things is the growing spirit of infidelity. He adds: "From these and other causes, we have lost that prompt energy in behalf of what is right, and that vigorous hostility to what is wrong, which were so honourable traits in the character of those who have gone before us. (p. 381).

ties and the establishment of the national government under the new federal constitution, there was a period of semi-anarchy, when obedience to any sort of law was difficult to enforce. The disrespect for authority in both church and state which arose from these conditions could not fail to have a distinctly bad influence on the moral conditions in inland towns. In the disturbances of those days the inland farmer was generally to be found on the side of rebellion, and active in opposing a reëstablishment of law and order.1

Virtues of the Age of Homespun.

Too much emphasis must not be laid upon the dark features of the community life of these times. Undoubtedly there were many advantages arising from the homogeneous construction of society, from the uniformity of the inhabitants in race, religion and manners, and from the absence of class distinctions based on differences in wealth. The inland villages were by no means entirely lacking in opportunities for helpful and stimulating social intercourse; but it was from the home rather than from the community life that the principal virtues of the agricultural population, of which their descendants have been so justly proud, were chiefly derived. First of all, no child could grow up in the self-sufficient household of those days without being thoroughly trained in habits of frugality and economy. In his sermon, "The Age of Homespun," Horace Bushnell wrote: "It was also a great point, in this homespun mode of life that it imparted exactly what many speak of only with contempt, a closely girded habit of economy. Harnessed, all together, in the producing process, young and old, male and female, from the boy that rode the plow-horse, to the grandmother knitting under her spectacles, they had no conception of squandering lightly what they had all been at work, thread by thread, and grain by grain, to produce. They knew too exactly what every thing cost, even small things, not to husband them carefully. "2

This frugality did at times develop into meanness, but not necessarily so; and whatever tendencies may have existed in this direction were to a certain degree offset by another characteristic which such households and such communities developed, that of mutual helpfulness. In a community where the services of the specialized pro

1 Take, for instance, Shay's Rebellion in Massachusetts, 1786-1787. See Fiske, John. The Critical Period in American History. Boston. 1898, pp. 192198.

2 Work and Play, p. 395.

fessions to which we are accustomed, such as those of the trained nurse or of the funeral director, for instance, were entirely lacking, the deficiency was made up by the voluntary offices of neighbors. It was turn and turn about. Such services were rarely if ever paid for, but the understanding was that the person or family receiving the service stood ready to render similar services willingly when occasion should arise. The practices of neighborly coöperation in the extraordinary tasks of farm labor, such as in raising buildings and in "changing works" of all sorts; the custom of parceling out portions of slaughtered animals so as to equalize consumption and decrease waste; all these arrangements were, we have seen, direct results of the farmers' necessity of adapting themselves to the self-sufficient conditions of their life. Indirectly, a helpful and neighborly spirit was stimulated.

Educative Effects.

In its educative effects the self-sufficient household produced certain results which the more formal training of our modern homes and schools has never been able to approximate. In the first place, it inculcated habits of self-reliance and an ability to bear responsibility. In large families where the various tasks of the house and farm were apportioned to each member of the family according to his strength and ability, even the little children were taught early that for the performance of their particular tasks they were to be strictly accountable. It was a hard discipline often, and perhaps it developed too early a serious way of taking life, but under proper control it evolved a race of men strong and independent.

The Importance of the Mechanical Ingenuity of the Yankee Farmer in the Future Industrial Development of New England.

We have already spoken of the mechanical ingenuity of the Yankee farmer. It arose just as immediately as these other characteristics from the necessities of getting a complete living from the products of a single farm, and from the lack of any clearly marked division of labor in the rural communities.1 Of the many contributions of the

1 It may be objected that there have been many cases of isolated communities whose inhabitants have not shown themselves especially ingenious along mechanical lines. Instances coming readily to mind are the Boers of the Transvaal and the mountaineers of eastern Tennessee. But it will be found that such communities were in many important respects not comparable with the towns of southern New England. Although suffering under the same inability to export foodstuffs, and consequently feeling the same necessity of making use of ingen

Age of Homespun to the future industrial development of New England, this characteristic of mechanical ingenuity was perhaps the most important. The stage of self-sufficiency was in many ways a period of preparation for the coming era. The land had all been cleared and settled; a considerable amount of capital had been accumulated in the commercial towns, ready for investment in new enterprises which might prove more successful than commerce; stable and efficient legal and political institutions had been organized; and finally the population had been trained in habits of frugality, economy and industry. But it was the presence of inventive ingenuity which seems to have aided the growth of manufacturing in New England more than any of these. The ability to devise a means to an end; to invent and perfect all sorts of tools and appliances, was originally turned to account only in more efficiently supplying the needs of the household or the surrounding community. When, however, the growing prosperity of the cotton planters in the Southern states opened a market for manufactured goods; when the ingenious farmer-mechanics of the inland towns of southern New England learned that they could get a living, and a much better living than that derived from agriculture by the sale of the fruits of their skill over a wide area, then this inventive ingenuity became utilized in the establishment and development of numberless enterprises and showed itself as a most valuable asset in industrial progress.

ious contrivances in satisfying their own wants, these three communities differed widely in the advantages of education, of communal life and perhaps also in the inborn qualities of their people. Neither the colonists of the South African republic, nor the rural folk of the Tennessee mountains enjoyed the widespread common-school education with its consequent high level of intelligence, nor the close association in village communities, both of which must have favored the development of intellectual talents of all sorts,-among them inventiveness,-among the Yankee farmers. It may be also that the original settlers of New England, coming as they did largely from urban districts in the mother country, transmitted to their descendants a superior knowledge of the technical processes of the ordinary crafts, and perhaps certain favoring physiological and psychological characteristics.

More important than these considerations, in my opinion, is the fact that the commercial isolation of the New England towns was not as complete as that of the other two communities mentioned. For their foodstuffs, the farmers of the inland towns of southern New England had practically no market. For small manufactured wares, however, there was a market in the coast towns and in the Southern states. Consequently in the production of wooden-ware and tinware, of hats and shoes, of buttons, clocks and other Yankee notions for these markets, opportunity was given for the full fruition of that mechanical ingenuity which germinated in the favoring atmosphere of the self-sufficient farms.

The Home Market.

With the growth of manufactures in the inland towns of southern New England came the rise of a specialized non-agricultural population and a market for the farmer was created, not far away in the Southern states or in the West Indies, but right at home, often in his own town. And thus came to an end the Age of Homespun, the era of commercial isolation. It was not a change accomplished in a single decade; in many out-of-the-way villages conditions remained practically constant until 1840 or 1850; but in 1810 an era of change had set in. From that time to the Civil War an Industrial Revolution was in progress, comparable in scope and in its effects to that which had preceded it by a half-century in England.