THE PROBLEM OF AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 65 



could raise money to pay it. Most of the pastoral scenes described 

 by the writers of the Old Testament, and by Virgil and Agricola, were 

 presented anew every year in New England during the period under 

 consideration. The inventor had not dreamed of machines for plant- 

 ing, cultivating, and harvesting field crops. 



There was little of what could be called commercial farming in the 

 northern states at that time. Farmers who were located near the sea- 

 coast, or near a navigable river, could always dispose of their surplus 

 products to good advantage and at fair prices. But such was not 

 the case with farmers who lived a long distance from water communi- 

 cations. They could drive their cattle to market, but the price of 

 their grain was consumed in hauling it a hundred miles, while their 

 apples and potatoes would not be accepted as gifts. There was often 

 great scarcity of some product of which there was an abundance in a 

 locality two hundred miles away. Wool was almost the only article 

 that could be transported a long distance without having its price 

 absorbed in the cost of cartage. There were no railroads. The earth 

 roads were poor, and oxen were generally employed to draw farm 

 products to market. 



NOTE. Lack of markets or means to reach them were conditions 

 found in all sections of the country during the period of settlement. 

 In Ohio- 

 There was little inducement to cultivate the soil in those days, except 

 to produce what the family consumed and what would support the stock 

 and pay the taxes the latter, the farmer very frequently not being able 

 to realize enough of money from his crops to do. There was no market at 

 home, no foreign demand, and if there had been, it would have been beyond 

 their reach. The opening of the Ohio canal in 1827 was the first godsend 

 to the early settlers of the county, and after that the completion of the 

 P., Ft. W. & C. R. R. imparted value to every product of the farm 

 [Ben Douglass, History of Wayne County, Ohio, pp. 191-95]. 



In Missouri in 1826 



The difficulty of finding a market for the surplus produce is not a 

 diminutive evil. There is not that ease and certainty of raising a small 

 sum of money by sending the articles of the farm to a sure market. All 

 articles of life in Illinois and Missouri have been, for some years, below 

 what the planters could afford to raise them for, with any view beyond 

 domestic consumption. There is a great abundance and variety of wild 

 fowl and turkeys. A Missouri planter, with a moderate force and a good 

 plantation, can be as independent as it is fit that we should be. He can 



