Rural Economy in New England 349 



facture of muskets, perfected by Eli Whitney in New Haven/ and 

 improvements in a number of other lines of manufacture, such as 

 the making of tin plate in Meriden, in Connecticut, and the manu- 

 facture of wooden clocks in Waterbury, all of which displayed the 

 ingenuity of his countrymen along mechanical lines. Why was it 

 that this spirit of progress and invention, this capacity to work out 

 new ideas and to apply the ideas of others did not display itself 

 in agriculture? Certainly there was a large field for improvement 

 there. The answer is simple. The application of genius and energy 

 along mechanical lines was profitable, because a market could be 

 found for the improved and increased product; a market for increased 

 agricultural produce was not at hand, therefore progress along that 

 line was not remunerative. 



Conservatism. 



Conservatism has always been acknowledged as a characteristic 

 quality of any agricultural population, especially in countries where 

 the land is held in small tracts in fee simple and cultivated by the 

 owners. New experiments are always made reluctantly; with limited 

 resources the failure of a single crop may bring disaster. The New 

 England farmers were undoubtedly conservative,- but it seems illogi- 

 cal to select this quality of their minds as a determining factor in the 

 explanation of the lack of agricultural progress. For if conservatism 

 had been so important it would have affected not only the inland 

 farmers but also those of the coast regions. The latter had behind 

 them the same ancestry and the same traditions, the conditions of 

 land tenure were the same; but yet, as we have seen, they did not 

 hesitate to make new ventures, to invest labor and capital in their 

 farms, to modify their practices in any way that seemed to offer 

 more profit. 



Land was Cheap and Labor Dear — Washington's Explanation. 



The third argument, that concerning the relative prices of land 

 and labor, deserves more serious consideration. It is given most 

 prominence by those writers who were intelligently seeking an eco- 

 nomic explanation of the phenomena they observed. So Washing- 

 ton wrote: "An English farmer must entertain a contemptible opinion 



' See Dwight, Statistical Account of New Haven, pp. 38-39. 



'General Warren wrote: "Our farmers have all along followed the practice 

 of their fathers, which might be adopted, at first, from necessity, and is pursued 

 from want of spirit to adopt a better and more rational system by those who are 

 convinced of the absurdity of it." American Museum, II. 346. 



