390 Percy Wells Bidwell 



1820 continued at such a rate as to leave the population of tliese states practically 

 stationary. (4) The migratory movement was felt much more strongly in in- 

 land counties than on the coast, because of the entire reliance of the former on 

 agriculture. (5) Among the agricultural towns, those which had a market for 

 their products suffered far less severely from emigration than other towns not 

 so favorably situated. 



Emigration the Result of a Crippled State of Agriculture. 



In this phenomenon of emigration, therefore, we have another feature of the 

 social and economic life of southern New England which was caused directly 

 by the dependence of the entire community on a single industry, agriculture. 

 There was, as we have seen, no division of labor sufficient either to furnish a mar- 

 ket for agricultural products within the rural town, or to create a non-agricultural 

 population in industrial towns and cities. There was, indeed, a small market 

 in the commercial towns on the coast and another somewhat larger in the West 

 Indies and the Southern states, but their combined demands were not sufiicient 

 to influence to any appreciable degree the life of the farmers in inland towns. 

 The results of this state of affairs upon the agricultural industry are considered 

 in Chapter V. List has called this condition "a crippled state of agriculture," 

 and goes on to show how the inevitable result is emigration. He says: "By a 

 crippled state of agriculture' we mean that state of things in which, from want 

 of a powerful and steadily developing manufacturing industry, the entire increase 

 of population tends to throw itself on agriculture for employment, consumes 

 all the surplus agricultural production of the country, and as soon as it has con- 

 siderably increased either has to emigrate or share with the agriculturists already 

 in existence the land immediately at hand, till the landed property of every fam- 

 ily has become so small that it produces only the most elementary and necessary 

 portion of that family's requirements of food and raw materials, but no consider- 

 able surplus which it might exchange with the manufacturers for the manufactured 

 products which it requires." ^ 



That the causes of this great loss of population were essentially economic 

 was realized by contemporary writers. Various travelers had remarked that the 

 southern states m New England were, at the end of the eighteenth centurj', fully 

 settled. For instance, La Rochefoucauld wrote: "Connecticut, Rhode Island 

 and Massachusetts have at present nearly their due quantum of population."^ 

 One especially clear-minded writer had, as early as 1789, anticipated the only 

 remedy for the outward movement. He wrote: "Our lands are cleared and set- 

 tled; our farms in general will not bear a further division; unless there be some 

 new resource, our most active, industrious and enterprising young men .... 

 will emigrate to those new parts of the continent where there is more vacant 

 territory."'' 



' Author's italics. 



''List, Friedrich. The National System of Political Economy. Translated 

 by S. S. Lloyd. London. 1885. pp. 154-155. 



3 Travels, II. 195. See also Carey, American Pocket Atlas, p. 46; Morse, 

 Gazetteer, 1810, art. Connecticut; American Husbandry, I. 47. 



* Quoted from an anonymous letter dated at Hartford, Connecticut, printed 

 in the American Museum. Vol. VIII., p. 25. 



