Rural Economy in New England 373 



manent body of hired workmen, so also there was no class of agri- 

 cultural laborers.^ 



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 com- 

 pared with the other items in their budgets.^ 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 Eng- 

 land. 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 sea- 

 man 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. 



