CHAPTER X

AGRICULTURE FROM THE CLOSE OF THE REVOLUTION TO THE CIVIL WAR

COLONIAL agriculture had been carried on in both north and south by the crudest methods and in the most wasteful manner; as a whole the conditions were not radically disturbed by the Revolution. Nevertheless, the war was not without its effect. On the one hand, a market was provided by the British and the French armies which made the near-by farmers prosperous. On the other hand, certain deleterious effects are to be noted. Many farmers and laborers deserted agriculture for war; British cruisers intercepted the usual trade with the West Indies and many farms fell into decay. The excitements of campaigning were not conducive, at the conclusion of hostilities, to a speedy resumption of former activities. The uncertainty of the days of the "Critical Period" were enervating to ambition and industry, and the soldier with his pockets full of military land scrip was tempted to try his fortune beyond the mountains. Conditions improved gradually during the more prosperous years following the adoption of the Constitution, especially after the Continental wars opened up new markets,' but the unscientific methods, which so forcibly struck European travelers, continued for many years.

Effect on Agriculture of Unoccupied Public Lands and the Westward Movement.-For almost three hundred years the greatest single influence on American agriculture has been the existence of unoccupied land readily accessible to the people because of the liberal land policy of the government. As we have seen, a law of 1775 allowed anyone to buy 640 acres at one dollar an acre. This was changed in 1800 to allow the purchase of 320 acres or more at two dollars an acre, one-fourth in cash and the rest in three annual payments. The poor man was further favored in 1820 by an act which allowed him to purchase eighty 1 See chap. xi.

acres (one-eighth of a section) at $1.25 an acre, this liberal tendency continuing until the Homestead Act of 1862 finally ⚫ granted free land. Anyone endowed with a vestige of ambition and willingness to work might easily acquire land and a start in life. An ordinary laborer in the new country might save enough in a year to purchase his eighty acres, while a skilled mechanic or school-teacher, both in great demand on the frontier, might purchase in less time. The proceeds from the sale of two horses or eight cattle would buy a quarter section. Under this policy and during the years 1783-1860 most of the land between the Alleghanies and the Mississippi was taken up while the advance tide of immigration had swept into Texas, covered Missouri, and was penetrating into Kansas and Minnesota. The Mormons were carrying on agriculture around the Great Salt Lake and farms were springing up on the Pacific slope.

Perhaps the greatest effect of this easily acquired land was to perpetuate the old-fashioned and criminally wasteful methods. In a letter to Arthur Young the treatment of land in Virginia is thus described by Washington:

The cultivation of tobacco has been almost the sole object with men of landed property, and consequently a regular course of crops have never been in view. The general custom has been, first to raise a crop of Indian corn (maize) which according to the mode of cultivation, is a good preparation for wheat; then a crop of wheat; after which the ground is respited (except from weeds, and every trash that can contribute to its foulness) for about eighteen months; and so on, alternately, without any dressing, till the land is exhausted; when it is turned out, without being sown with grass seeds, or any method taken to restore it; and another piece is ruined in the same manner.1

The tobacco grower, when his land wore out, found it cheaper to take up new land than to care for the old, and tobacco culture advanced westward into Kentucky. The same was true a little later of cotton, this factor contributing to the rapid occupation of Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. Northern agriculture was

1 The Writings of George Washington, collected and edited by Worthington C. Ford. New York, 1891, xi, 178 ff.

influenced in a similar way. Why slave to cultivate intensively a small farm in Massachusetts or New Hampshire, when an abundance of richer soil awaited the plow in western New York or the Ohio Valley? After the pioneer had reached the new country the temptation was always present to skim the cream from the fresh land and then sell out and try his fortune farther on. Before the development of rapid water and steam transportation the pioneer farmer was handicapped by a lack of markets, which naturally lessened incentive to improve his holdings. Enough could easily be raised to support his family without calling forth the latent possibilities of the new farm.

Even more harmful to agriculture than the ease of acquiring fresh lands after the old had been ruined was the fever of land speculation that seized the American people and continued decade after decade during this period. Exaggerated, to be sure, but with elements of truth is the picture drawn by an Englishman:

Speculation in real estate has for many years been the ruling idea and occupation of the Western mind. Clerks, labourers, farmers, storekeepers, merely followed their callings for a living, while they were speculating for their fortunes. There are no statistics which show how many Yankees went out West to buy a piece of land and make a farm and home, and live and settle, and die there. I think that not more than one-half per cent of the migration from the East started with that idea: and not even half of these carried out the idea. The German immigrants, indeed, were better entitled to be called settlers; but all classes and people of all kinds became agitated and unsettled, and had their acquisitiveness perpetually excited by land speculations in some shape or other-new railways, roads, proposed villages and towns, gold mines, water-powers, coal mines-some opportunity or other of getting rich all at once by a lucky hit. . . .

In the United States, vast numbers of the population became excited with dreams of sudden wealth, and the idea of a life of labour was scouted as the suitable destiny of mere timid, non-enterprising, weak people, or plodding Dutch or English, but altogether beneath the notice of Young America.

The people of the West became dealers in land, rather than its cultivators. Scorning cheap clocks, wooden nutmegs, and apple-parers, the Yankee, stepping from the almost ridiculous to the decidedly sublime, went out West, and traded in the progress of the country. Every one of any spirit, ambition, and intelligence (cash was not

essential) frequented the National Land Exchange, a vast concern, extending from the Mississippi to the Pacific.

By convenient laws, land was made as easily transferable and convertible as any other species of property. It might and did pass through a dozen hands within sixty days, rising in price at each transfer; in the meantime producing buffaloes and Red Indians. Millions of acres were bought and sold without buyer or seller knowing where they were, or whether they were anywhere; the buyer only knowing that he hoped to sell his title to them at a handsome profit.1

Chicago between 1830 and 1840 was a center of speculation.

The plats of towns, for a hundred miles around, were carried there to be disposed of at auction. The eastern people caught the mania. Every vessel coming west was loaded with them, their money and means, bound for Chicago, the great fairy land of fortunes. But as enough did not come to satisfy the insatiable greediness of the Chicago sharpers and speculators, they frequently consigned their wares to eastern markets. Thus, a vessel would be freighted with land and town lots, for the New York and Boston markets, at less cost than a barrel of flour. In fact, lands and town lots were the staple of the country, and were the only articles of export.2

Speculating on the progress of the country entered into the very soul of the pioneer and was part of his being. In picking out a site for his claim the first consideration was its situation in respect to a possible rise in value. The typical frontiersman of these days was a man who laid out his claim, erected a rude cabin, and worked the land only until he could sell out at a profit.

Upon the eastern farmer the effect of all this was demoralizing. He, too, imbibed the spirit of land speculation and many an eastern farm was for sale by the proprietor who was anxious to unload and try his fortune elsewhere. This trading on the progress of the country gave the American farmer a migratory tendency which was impossible under Old World conditions and unusual in a group which by its very occupation moved slowly. It broke down local attachments and discouraged intensive improvements. The farmer was not building for his descendants, but for the first possible opportunity to sell. Eastern agriculture

1 Mitchell, D. W., Ten Years in the United States 2 Ford, Thomas, History of Illinois, p. 181.

(1862), p. 325.

was further demoralized by western competition. After canals and railroads had provided an outlet for the bulky agricultural products of the west, the farmer of New England and the middle states found it impossible to compete successfully in the raising of grain and meat and was forced to reorganize his economy to that of truck farming, fruit raising, or dairying. This reorganization took time and was attended with difficulties. Farming in the east was further handicapped by difficulty in obtaining sufficient labor. Higher wages and greater opportunities drained off to the west the best of the farm hands, and tended to keep the labor cost higher in the east for both agricultural and industrial workers.

Southern Agriculture-Rise of Cotton.-Undoubtedly the most striking feature in the agricultural history of the first half century of the Republic was the rise of cotton. During the colonial period little progress was made in cotton culture. Lack of a market and the apparent overshadowing importance of tobacco discouraged its growth, despite the efforts of colonial governments to the contrary. Some cotton was raised to be woven into cloth, but its use was confined to the poorest classes. Interruption of trade with Great Britain during the Revolution, which cut off the importation of foreign fabrics, turned the minds of southerners to the production of cotton as a means of filling the need, and the legislatures of Maryland, Virginia, and South Carolina urged upon their people its possibilities. The chief difficulty with which the cotton grower had to contend was the separation of the seeds from the cotton fiber; even with slave labor it was a costly process.

The years 1790-1830 witnessed a veritable revolution in southern agriculture as far as the product was concerned. By the latter date cotton had become the principal southern crop and the largest single item of export from the country. This rapid development was occasioned first of all by the equally sudden opening of an available market. In England between the years 1767 and 1780 Hargreave, Arkwright, and Crompton had constructed devices which did away with the old-fashioned spinning by hand and made it possible to spin rapidly by water power and