TENANT FARMERS IN UNITED STATES PRIOR TO 1880 239 



on the subject. The American farmer of the last quarter of 

 the eighteenth century was as a rule owner of the land he tilled. 

 While in England the term " farmer " was used at that time to 

 designate a tenant farmer, in America the term had come 

 to imply landownership. There were many reasons for the 

 prevalence of landowning farmers and the scarcity of tenant 

 farmers in America. The system of inheritance helped to 

 maintain the class of landowning farmers. An agricultural 

 writer of the period remarked : " The little freeholders who live 

 upon their own property make much the most considerable 

 part of the whole province [of New England]. These are the 

 posterity of former settlers, who, having taken in tracts of 

 waste land proportioned to their ability, have died and left it to 

 their descendants equally divided among all the children, 

 by the gavelkind custom, which is prevalent throughout this 

 province." 1 



High wages, accompanied by low land values and the possi- 

 bility of taking up new land, made it relatively easy for 

 the poor man who was industrious to rise to the position of 

 landowning farmer. It could then be said that " the evening 

 of an industrious life is universally that of a little planter in 

 the midst of all necessaries." " Their farms yield food, much 

 of clothing, most of the articles of building, with a surplus suffi- 

 cient to buy such foreign luxuries as are necessary to make life 

 pass comfortably, there is very little elegance among them, 

 but more of necessaries a greater capability of hospitality, 

 and decent living than is to be found among the few remains 

 of their brethren in England." 2 



The self-sufficing character of the farm economy made it 

 possible in spite of poor means of transportation for the farmer 

 to go into the wilderness and carve out a home. The amount of 

 money acquired to settle upon new land in the early days varied 

 greatly. " In general, the settlers [in New York] come with 

 a small sum of money, very many of them with none at all, 



1 "American Husbandry," Vol. II, pp. 66 and 67. An anonymous work describ- 

 ing American agriculture, published in 1776. 

 *Ibid., Vol. I, pp. 72, 68. 



