The Mississippi Flows Through Corn Land 117 



their produce will rot on their hands and they cannot pay their 

 weaver, etc. 



Being a Weaver myself, and tho they be generally poor, still 

 they are as useful a set of men as any in the world, and so will re- 

 main as long as from the King to the peasant all are born naked, 

 I therefore would beg leave to say a word in answer to our pre- 

 tended Farmer, and make no doubt but the lowness of stile I shall 

 speak in will be excused when it is considered that a man may be 

 a profound weaver, and no grammarian. . . . 



My first answer to our Farmer is that we weavers, and I believe 

 I may say most of the other trades too, cannot live without meat, 

 bread and clothing, all of which I shall gladly take in exchange 

 for my labour. . . ." 



Our "profound Weaver" was not the only tradesman who 

 found it no hardship to return to the "country pay" of earlier 

 colonial days. As the war dragged on, a reappraisal of values 

 took place in which the cities lost caste. Land which would 

 produce food became more desirable than a fine house on 

 Broadway or on Boston Common. There was an exodus from 

 New York into the country. All through the northern colonies 

 men who had begun to think of leaving the farms for work 

 in the new factories gave up the idea, and went back to their 

 plows. Food was food. Also it had value in barter, if money 

 was tight. And with the quartermasters of two armies buying 

 rations there was no need to worry about markets for corn, 

 potatoes or pork. The Pennsylvania farmers were selling pro- 

 duce at good prices to the British in Philadelphia while Wash- 

 ington and his men were starving at Valley Forge. 



The continuous difficulty which Washington and his gen- 

 erals found themselves in, keeping a force of thirty to forty 

 thousand privates under arms, was not due to lack of courage 

 on the part of the soldiery. It had its roots in the intense 

 sectionalism which made men unable to see the conflict as 

 anything more than a series of local skirmishes. When the 

 zone of fighting moved from one colony to another, many in 

 the ranks saw no necessity for pursuing the enemy beyond 



