366 Percy Wells Bidwell 



of the New England farmer to adapt himself thereto.^ The most 

 significant because the most far-reaching feature of that environ- 

 ment was the lack of a market. The problem that confronted the 

 farmer was to get a living for himself and his family, and to get as 

 good a living as he could with the least expenditure of labor. If he 

 had been able to devote all his attention to raising some particular 

 product, with the proceeds of whose sale he could have purchased 

 the services of specialized artisans and goods from abroad, he un- 

 doubtedly would have preferred to do so. It would have tremendous- 

 ly increased his efl5ciency in production, and would have lightened 

 the labors of all the members of his family. But the lack of a market 

 was an insuperable obstacle to specialization and consequently the 

 family group was forced to rely upon itself and upon irregular ex- 

 change with other neighboring groups for the necessaries of existence, 

 and to do without, in large measure, the comforts and luxuries. 



Commodities Bought and Sold by a Minister-Farmer. 



There is not sufficient evidence to warrant even an approximate 

 numerical estimate of the amount of produce which the farmer did 

 actually sell and of the commodities which he received in exchange. 

 Occasionally, however, we come across an account book kept by an 

 inhabitant of one of these inland towns, a farmer, a blacksmith, or a 

 minister, which furnishes a concrete illustration of the small amount 

 of buying and selling which took place. Such an account book is 

 that of the Rev. Medad Rogers, the minister of New Fairfield, Con- 

 necticut, a small town on the western boundary of the state. ^ He had 



^ It may be objected that the tendency to invent is an instinctive activity; 

 that there is, psychologically speaking, an "impulse to contrivance." If this is 

 true, inventive ingenuity must be a general human endowment, not confined to 

 any particular nation or race. But the degree of the manifestation of this " im- 

 pulse, " of its successful realization, its embodiment in practical appliances among 

 any particular people at a given period in their history, must, it seems to me, 

 be largely dependent on the conditions of their economic environment. In the 

 inland towns of New England there was a far greater necessity for the development 

 of this "impulse" than in other less self-sufficient communities. Where, on the 

 small farm, a single family had to devise means to produce the most varied articles 

 for its own consumption, there the opportunities for the application of inventive- 

 ness and ingenuity were most numerous, and the advantages to be gained from the 

 use of such talents were most apparent. A consideration of economic and psycho- 

 logical aspects of inventiveness may be found in Professor Taussig's "Inventors 

 and Moneymakers." New York. 1915. Chapter I. 



* The population was 742 in 1810. The nearest outlet to a market was the 

 Hudson River, from 20 to 25 miles distant. 



