68 AGRICULTURAL ECONOMICS 



Jack himself, but his interests cry for law and order ; for the private 

 and peaceful possession of land instead of a bloody and wasteful free 

 range; for homes instead of tents. 



NOTE. This pastoral period in the development of the West was 

 but typical of what happened in all sections of the country. The 

 ranchers were the advance guard of the army of agriculture, and 

 grazing was the transition stage between hunting and trapping, and 

 settled agriculture. Professor Turner tells us 1 that there was such 

 a "rancher's frontier" in Virginia at the close of the seventeenth 

 century. "Travelers of the eighteenth century found the 'cow pens' 

 among the canebrakes and pea-vine pastures of the South and the 

 'cow drivers' took their droves to Charleston, Philadelphia, New 

 York. Travelers at the close of the War of 1812 met droves of more 

 than a thousand cattle and swine from the interior of Ohio going to 

 Pennsylvania to fatten for the Philadelphia market." Thence the 

 rancher was crowded on to new frontiers beyond the Mississippi, out 

 upon the semi-arid plains and up into the mountains. Today he 

 retains but little land which is suitable to more intensive uses. 

 EDITOR. 



G. The Transition to Commercialized Agriculture 



16. THE OLD FARMER AND THE NEW 2 

 BY KENYON L. BUTTERFIELD 



The old farmer was a pioneer, and he had all the courage, enter- 

 prise, and resourcefulness of the pioneer. He owned and controlled 

 everything in sight. Half a century ago, in the Middle West, the 

 strong men and the influential families were largely farmers. 



The new farmer lives in a day when the nation is not purely an 

 agricultural nation, but is also a manufacturing and a trading nation. 

 But he realizes that out of this seeming decline of agriculture grow his 

 best opportunities. He discards pioneer methods because pioneering 

 is not now an effective art. 



Economically, the old farmer was not a business man, but a bar- 

 terer. The rule of barter still survives in the country grocery where 

 butter and eggs are traded for sugar and salt. The old farmer was 

 industrially self-sufficient. He did not farm on a commercial basis. 



1 The Significance of the Frontier in American History. 



3 Adapted from Chapters in Rural Progress, pp. 54-61. (The University of 

 Chicago Press.) 



