372 Percy Wells Bidwell 



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 for- 

 eign.^ 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 con- 

 sidered 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 cooperation of neighbors. Occasion- 

 ally 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- 



' Letters on the Eastern States, p. 405. 



* These observations were in many cases concerned with the difficulty or im- 

 possibility 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. 



'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 culti- 

 vate 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. 



