36 PRINCIPLES OF RURAL ECONOMICS 



area with definite boundaries came to be the domain of each 

 tribe, the wandering life gave way to settled life, generally in 

 small villages surrounded by woodland and pasture. For many 

 years the property remained tribal rather than individual. As 

 members within the village still further increased, and the 

 expansion of the area of pasture land became impossible, some 

 more productive method of securing food became an absolute 

 necessity. This was found in the growing of crops. It has 

 been estimated that an area of land sufficient for the support of 

 one hundred people by pasturing animals will, when brought 

 under ordinary tillage, support from three to four times as 

 many. In the beginning tillage was confined to small fields 

 of specially fertile land, usually near the village, the outlying 

 lands remaining in pasture and woodland. At first these fields 

 may have been cultivated in common and the produce shared 

 in common, but before the beginning of recorded history the 

 system of pure communism had been given up in some parts of 

 Europe, and soon after in other parts, though a modified type 

 of communal farming persisted until well within the historical 

 period. This was a type of farming in which the lands were 

 the common property of the village community, but in which 

 each family was allotted a share upon which to grow crops for 

 its own subsistence. 



Communal farming. After the pastoral tribe had lived a set- 

 tled village life for a few generations, gradually the old idea of 

 kinship as the basis of organization began to give way, and ter- 

 ritoriality that is, residence within a given territory began 

 to be the basis. The village broke up into families somewhat 

 resembling the modern family. This change was helped on by 

 the growing interest in tillage. The idea that he that will not 

 work shall not eat is very deep-rooted. So long as all the cattle 

 of the village were herded by the common labor on the common 

 land, it was not easy to distinguish the product of one man's 



