SHIFTLESSNESS OF THE TENANTRY 35 



traditions as to the relation of labor to life. Thus they usually 

 dwelt in commonplace small log cabins, when fifty days of la- 

 bor would have given them good dwellings of the same easy 

 construction. They put up with "stick chimneys," built of 

 small round timbers daubed with clay, which were always 

 taking fire or tumbling down, when a trifle of labor would build 

 them of the stone which could be had by lifting it from the 

 gullies of the worn fields. In many cases they were too shiftless 

 to clear the dung from the log horse-stables; they would let it 

 lie until it was no longer possible to get the animals out of the 

 doors, then pull the logs apart and build the stable elsewhere. 

 In my youth, I never knew of manure being put upon the land. 

 When, about 1855, my father began the use of it, he was much 

 laughed at. The plan was to till a field until it was worn out 

 and then let it go to grass or bushes of a kindly nature, helped 

 by chance sowing; commonly the soil washed away until the 

 lava rock was exposed. The crops were mainly tobacco and 

 grains, and as there was no system of rotation, the fields rapidly 

 became exhausted. The more careful landlords required that 

 their tenants should plant tobacco, a most exhausting crop, only 

 for three or four years, and then set the land in grass ; but gen- 

 erally there was no adequate enforcement of the rules, so that 

 the cleared land rapidly became worthless. In the first sixty 

 years of this atrocious process nearly one half of the arable soil 

 of the northern counties of Kentucky, where most of the surface 

 steeply inclined, became unremunerative to plough tillage. 



My grandfather did what he could to contend against the evils 

 of bad tillage; he knew of the metayer system and copied it, 

 taking his rents in kind, that is, in a share of the crops. I well 

 remember the times when the payments were made, including 

 not only tobacco and grains but bags of wool, feathers, and even 

 beeswax. To dispose of these goods, he had a store where other 

 things were sold as well, the place giving occupation to the ever- 

 present "poor kin." 



The body of the people with whom I came in contact were the 



