Evolution of American Agriculture/Chapter IV
CHAPTER IV
Colonial period
THE INCEPTION of the white man's agriculture in this country was a matter of pure imitation. Smith and his company at Jamestown were "gentlemen" who knew nothing about the cultivation of the soil, and took their first lessons from a couple of Indians that they held as prisoners. The "Pilgrim fathers" also were not originally farmers, and their cultural methods were derived from a study and imitation of the red man. Naturally, since they possessed iron spades and hoes, their labor was more efficient; yet for many years the settlers went upon the land with a farming outfit so meager that the man, accustomed to modern agriculture and its perfected machinery, is apt to gasp with astonishment and wonder how in hell they kept from starving when he learns how small it was.
Here is the list of tools supplied a Virginia settler with six persons in his family: :- Agricultural tools—5 broad hoes, 5 narrow hoes, 3 shovels, 2 spades, 2 hand bills, 2 pick axes or mattocks.
- Clearing tools—5 felling axes.
- House and domestic tools—2 broad axes, 2 hatchets, 2 steel saws, 2 hand saws, 1 whip saw, 2 hammers, 2 augurs, 2 piercers, 3 gimlets, 6 chisels, 2 frows, 1 grindstone, nails of all sizes.
Compare the agricultural tools listed above with the tractor, pulling its gang of plows, harrow, seeder, and land packer; also the mower, combined harvester, corn binder, potato digger and threshing machine, and you have some idea of the great advance that three hundred years of effort and invention have brought to modern man. It certainly would be a "boob" that would start in to buck the modern game with a Virginia settler's outfit. It's easy to see the "water tank" where he would "hit the grit."
The Indians were communal in their method of life and usually cultivated their fields in common, and the Virginia settlers tried the communal way for a couple of years, but, finding themselves unsuited to such a mode of labor, resorted to individual ownership about 1609 or 1610.
There were three methods of acquiring land; first by purchase of a share of stock in the colonization company; second, by some act of meritorious service; and third, by "Head Right" (paying the passage of some person from England to the Colony). The share of stock cost $62.50 and entitled the holder to one hundred acres in the first subdivision and another one hundred acres in the second subdivision. Great tracts of land were secured to individuals who were able to buy a large number of shares, and much of the early trouble with the Indians arose over the efforts of these shareholders to drive the red men off these purchased holdings, the redskin not being regarded as endowed with any title, either natural or acquired.
Ministers of the church, physicians, government officials and employers of the company were given one hundred acres each for meritorious service and could secure the second allotment by the erection of a house within three years. Any person who paid the passage of a laborer, either bond or free, to the colony, received fifty acres by "Head Right," and after 1618 this became the common method of obtaining land. As labor was in great demand, the practice became a system of investing in labor and having a piece of land thrown in to make the bargain a good one. Finally the payment to the Secretary of an amount equal to the passage money of a laborer would secure title to a tract of land and "Head Rights" passed by purchase.
Wherever there are free lands in abundance free labor is difficult to secure. The laborer can usually make as much working for himself, if he has an outfit, as anyone else is willing to pay him, and this was especially so in Virginia. Laborers came under bond to work a certain time to repay their passage money and pay for tools, seeds and provisions to make a start for themselves, and when this time was up became farmers on their own account, so there was really no paid labor in the colony worthy of mention. When a Dutch ship landed a cargo of negro slaves at Jamestown in 1619, the labor problem was practically solved for the colonists. It also solved the question of small land holdings, for we find records showing larger and larger tracts being patented every year. In 1619 the patents averaged about one hundred acres; in 1626, about one hundred and fifty acres; in 1636, about three hundred and fifty acres; in 1642, about five hundred and sixty acres; in 1650, about six hundred and seventy-seven acres, and from 1666 to 1679 they averaged eight hundred and ninety acres. The slaves not only drove out the small landholders, but profoundly effected the economic and therefore political history of the whole country, and especially the South. And in this connection it can be shown that "cattle ranching" originated in Virginia rather than in Texas or the Far West, for the small planters, having failed in competition with their slave holding neighbors, retired to the foothills beyond the colony lands, taking their cattle with them, and in a few years had large herds grazing in the highlands, where they held annual "round ups" and marked and branded in genuine "cow-puncher" style.
Agricultural development moved slowly in Virginia, even if they did have the slaves, and in 1650 there were only one hundred and fifty plows in the whole colony, though the population was well over the fifteen thousand mark. Yet in 1631 the people were able to offer to sell corn in the Dutch settlements, and in New England tobacco was their principal export crop, and as early as 1640 they attempted to restrict the crop to 1,500,000 pounds in order to keep up the price. Cotton was well known to the Virginian, but did not assume any great importance with them until about 1750, at which time it became important to all the South, though its great commercial importance did not come about until the end of the Revolutionary War.
The raising of cattle reached large proportions in Virginia and the breeding of horses was taken up early in the history of the colony, but for a long time saddle horses were bred in preference to drafters. Sheep, goats and swine did well and became numerous.
The colonies to the south of Virginia have about the same agricultural history, with the same system of land holding, the same labor problem, and the same general agricultural system. Cattle raising was a large industry with them. They raised wheat, tobacco, and corn, and, of the latter, exported 100,000 bushels from South Carolina alone in 1792. Forest products, such as tar, pitch, turpentine and lumber were exported from North Carolina, and on the basis of the rice and indigo exportation, Charleston became the largest and wealthiest city of the South.
Large tracts of land and a baronial style of life was the rule in the South. Small towns were unknown, the great plantations being practically self-sustaining and the "planters" conducted their commercial operations directly with England, the West Indies or the Northern colonies.
New England never was agriculturally independent. She had to rely somewhat upon other regions for a portion of her food supply, yet agriculture was always large among her economic interests.
The early New England land system was based upon the common ownership and use of a tract of land by a number of church members. The meeting house was the center of their community and only those who adhered to the faith were citizens. They allotted the citizens portions of meadow, plow lands and grazing and forest lands, together with a right to the commons which everybody used. Many Indian communal customs were adopted by them, though the most of their customs are directly traceable to their religion.
They learned to cultivate and fertilize corn from the Indians, also beans, pumpkins, artichokes, etc., and themselves introduced wheat, rye, buckwheat and barley from the mother country. The custom of seeding worn fields to grass in order to recuperate originated in New England and seems to be the particular contribution the Puritans made to the art and science of agriculture.
The quasi communal customs of log rollings, house-raisings, husking bees and quilting parties, together with spelling matches and literary societies and singing schools seem to be typically New England productions, arising not only out of their common religious bond, but out of the economic fact that there was practically no non-land-owning laboring class. Hence co-operation in the things too heavy or too tedious for one man and his family became a custom of their communities.
In the matter of plowing, the plowman usually went about breaking up the land for his neighbor, and in some towns a bounty was paid to anyone who would buy a plow and keep it in repair so that the neighborhood plowing could be done. Their other tools were the harrow, the spade, the hoe and a clumsy wooden fork.
Cattle raising never became a large industry in New England on account of the difficulty of securing forage for beef cattle, but dairying did become important, the foundation for their herds being imported from Denmark about 1633. Little attention was paid to horse breeding, as oxen were the principal draft animals, though a breed of pacing horses were developed in Rhode Island, but they disappeared as a distinct breed by the year 1800.
The middle colonies contained a mixed population of European peoples, with several systems of agriculture. The land tenure was similar to New England, except in New York where the Dutch feudal "Patron System" prevailed. The holdings of these patrons ran up as high as 100,000 acres and form the basis of many of the great New York estates of today. The patrons acted as local governors, securing immigrants to rent their lands at low rentals, collecting taxes and supporting the schools and churches.
Wage labor on the farms did not exist to any extent in these colonies. Slaves and bond servants only worked for a master. Every one else had a small free hold of his own or else was a craftsman and kept his own shop in the little town.
The farming implements were practically the same as those used in New England and the South. Among the crops, wheat held the leading place and the Pennsylvania millers had a great reputation for the excellence of their flour. Cabbage, turnips, potatoes, apples, peaches, watermelons, buckwheat and corn are mentioned largely in their agricultural reports, and the Swedish traveler Kalm reports the irrigation of meadows in Pennslyvania in 1748, and the following of land to grasses, as was the practice in New England. Cattle, horses, hogs, sheep and poultry were plentiful in all these colonies, though there does not seem to have been any effort to standardize a breed or get a better stock.
Many intelligent writers have condemned the wasteful methods of colonial agriculture, but they have failed to consider the fact that land was cheaper than labor and we only economize in that of which we have a scarcity. It was cheaper to plow a new and fertile field than to manure and intensely cultivate an exhausted one. The fertilizer problem was left to future generations.
Whatever may be said, the colonist met his task squarely and fairly and so well did he seek out the possibilities of the land that only one important crop (sorghum) has been introduced to our agriculture since his day.
DRAY PLOUGH
A plough used in the old days. In summer, when the ground was hard, this contrivance was very difficult to use because the point was constantly flying out of the ground. The plough was set higher or lower by means of wedges.