60 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



while the uplands were well adapted for tillage. Squatter sovereignty 

 was unknown, for no individuals were permitted to establish them- 

 selves within the limits of the colony. Each body swarmed out in 

 community, with a regular allotment of individual farms, based in 

 extent upon the wealth of the settlers, and a great pasture, a peat 

 meadow, a salt marsh, and fishing grounds held in conimon. These 

 farms were so laid out that no house was over half a mile from the 

 meeting-house, and it was with astonishing rapidity that agricultural 

 communities sprang up like the fabled warriors of Cadmus into full- 

 armed life. 



The immigrants were supplied with carts, chains, shovels, hoes, 

 and rakes, but it was some years before a plough was introduced; 

 and even so late as 1637 there were but thirty ploughs in Massachu- 

 setts. A yeoman in Salem that year made complaint that "he had 

 not sufficient ground to maintain a plough" on his tract of three 

 hundred acres, and he was allowed an addition of twenty acres to his 

 original grant if he would "set up ploughing." The ploughs first used 

 were the imported English wheel ploughs, but somewhat lighter, 

 although clumsy kinds were in time made by the village wheelwright 

 and blacksmith. Then came what was long known as the Gary 

 plough, with clumsy wrought-iron share, wooden landside and stand- 

 ard, and wooden mouldboard plated over with sheet-iron or tin, and 

 with short, upright handles, requiring a strong man to guide it. The 

 bar-share plough was another form still remembered by many for its 

 rudely fitted wooden mouldboard and coulter, and immense friction 

 from the rough iron bar which formed the landside. 



Massachusetts was the first among the colonies to introduce the 

 manufacture of scythes and other agricultural implements. In 1646 

 the general court granted to Joseph Jenckes, of Lynn, a native of 

 Hammersmith, in England, and connected with the first ironworks in 

 that colony, the exclusive privilege for fourteen years "to make 

 experience of his abillityes and inventions for making, among other 

 things, of mills for the making of sithes and other edge tooles." His 

 patent "for ye more speedy cutting of grass" was renewed for seven 

 years in May, 1655. The improvement consisted in making the blade 

 longer and thinner, and in strengthening it at the same time by welding 

 a square bar of iron to the back, as in the modern scythe, thus materi- 

 ally improving upon the old English scythe then in use, which was 

 short, thick, and heavy, like a bush scythe. A century later a Scotch- 

 man named Hugh Orr came to Massachusetts and erected at Bridge- 



