SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 73 



its rows of negro quarters, and groups of barns and shops, was, 

 in large measure, a self-sustained community. The planter needed 

 little that could be obtained elsewhere in his own colony or in 

 the South, and conducted his commercial operations directly with 

 England, the West Indies, and the Northern colonies. . . . There 

 were a few negroes on every plantation who were trained in the 

 mechanic arts, and a small number of white craftsmen found 

 work in traveling around the country doing such jobs as were 

 beyond the capacity of the slaves." l 



In the Northern colonies the farms were small and were oper- 

 ated mainly by the labor of the farmer and his family. This 

 called for a great deal of cooperation among farmers and de- 

 veloped a wholesome social life. Accordingly, there were nu- 

 merous quilting, spinning, husking, and paring bees, house and 

 barn raisings, logrollings, and similar rural festivities. 



The farming was everywhere of the pioneering kind. Less 

 attention was given to the finer branches than to the rough work 

 of clearing the forests, reducing the soil to cultivation, determin- 

 ing what crops could be raised to best advantage, and, in a 

 general way, creating farms out of the rough materials which 

 the new continent afforded. It would not be very inaccurate to 

 say that the first object of the pioneer farmers was to produce 

 farms, and the second to produce crops. However, every im- 

 poitant crop now grown in the United States, except alfalfa, 

 sorghum, and a few new varieties of the standard grains, was 

 introduced and acclimated during the colonial period. Thus 

 the pioneer farming of that period laid broad and deep the 

 foundations of the agricultural development which was to 

 follow. The problem of farm management was not how to 

 save land, since land was abundant, but how to save labor, 

 since labor was scarce ; and the colonial farmers solved their 

 peculiar problems successfully. 



1 Thwaites, The Colonies, p. 102. Longmans Green & Co. 



