CHAPTER TWO 



/ 



THE FARM LAND 



Men want land. Since the beginning of human time, the 

 great driving force that has pushed the frontiers of the 

 world deeper and deeper into the unknown wilderness is this 

 hunger for land; land to live on, land to till, land in which to 

 stretch and feel yourself grow. In the seventeenth century 

 America became the goal of the land-hungry. It was the fron- 

 tier of civilisation. 



In 1629 John Winthrop was urging his fellow Puritans to 

 come to Massachusetts Bay. "Why then," he asked, "should 

 we stand striving here [in England] for places of habitation 

 . . . and in the meantime suffer a whole Continent as fruitfull 

 and convenient for the use of men to be waste without any 

 improvement?" 1 



Why indeed? As the inscription on an old coin put the 

 problem, "In Virginia land free and labor scarce; in England 

 land scarce and labor plenty." 2 



And not only was land scarce in England. Farmers who for 

 generations had been tillers of the soil suddenly found them 

 selves with no land to till and no market for their labor. The 

 wool trade had become so profitable that a law was passed 

 which permitted the sheep raisers to enclose for sheep pastures 

 fields which had originally been farming land used in com 

 mon. You can imagine how reports like these from America 



1 Andrews, The Colonial Period of American History: Vol. I, The Settlements, 

 Yale University Press, New Haven, 1934, p. 55. 



2 Ibid., p. 57, note. 



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