SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 69 



the, rule. In such a situation as this, there are only two ways of 

 getting the greater part of the farm work done. One is for the 

 farmer to do it himself, the other is to make use of some kind 

 of compulsory labor. In all the English colonies, south as well 

 as north, it was customary in the earlier years for the farmers 

 to till their own land. A little later considerable use was made, 

 in both sections, of indentured servants. 



Indentured servants. An indentured servant was one whose 

 passage had been paid from the Old World to the New, and 

 who had bound himself to work for a period of years in 

 return for his passage money. At the expiration of the period 

 he became free and could become a landowner like any -other 

 freeman. 



Negro slaves. Use was also made of negro slaves, especially 

 in the South after 1619. There were negro slaves in the North- 

 ern colonies also, but they were used mainly as house servants 

 by the well-to-do townsmen. If any were used in agriculture, 

 they were so few as to be a negligible factor in the agricultural 

 development of the Northern colonies ; but in the South they 

 came to be used in large numbers in the culture of tobacco, 

 which was the chief money crop of the region. Thus there 

 developed a considerable difference in the type of farming in 

 the two sections. In the Northern colonies the farms con- 

 tinued to be tilled mainly by the labor of the owners them- 

 selves, with some help from indentured white servants and a 

 few hired laborers. In the South they tended to be cultivated 

 less and less by the labor of the owners, but more and more by 

 negro slaves. This tendency, however, was by no means rapid, 

 and small farmers who tilled their own land were always nu- 

 merous in the South. Still it is not an exaggeration to say that 

 the dominant type of Southern agriculture came to be that car- 

 ried on by means of slave labor. It was the difference in these 

 two types of agriculture which prevailed in the North and the 



