FARM MACHINERY 33 



and thrashed it out on his barn floor with a flail." 1 The poor 

 whites of Virginia, in 1790, lived in log huts "with the chinks 

 stuffed with clay ; the walls had no plaster ; the windows had no 

 glass ; the furniture was such as they had themselves made. Their 

 grain was thrashed by driving horses over it in the open field. 

 When they ground it they used a rude pestle and mortar, or, 

 placed in the. hollow of one stone, they beat it with another." 2 



In parts of Pennsylvania, in Delaware, the eastern shores of Maryland 

 and Virginia, and, we believe, in Rhode Island grain was generally trodden out 

 by oxen or horses as the more expeditious method [even later than the year 

 1800]. Horses were preferred for this work. A crop of three thousand bushels 

 could thus be threshed and secured ... in ten days. . . . The treading floors 

 were from forty to one hundred and thirty feet, more commonly sixty to one 

 hundred feet in diameter with a path twelve to fourteen feet wide near the 

 periphery upon which the grain was laid. The horses were led round at a slow 

 trot in platoons equidistant from each other. . . . The floors were sometimes 

 removed from field to field, but permanent floors made hard and smooth, and 

 kept so by careful use, were preferred. They were commonly fenced round, 

 sometimes with an outer and inner fence. 3 



Of the Georgia estates in 1790, it is said: Their " chief products 

 were negroes, rice, and tobacco. . . . The staple was tobacco, and 

 this was cultivated in the simplest manner with the rudest of tools. 

 Agriculture as we now know it can scarcely be said to have existed. 

 The plow was little used. The hoe was the implement of husbandry. 

 Made at the plantation smithy, the blade was ill-formed and clumsy ; 

 the handle was a sapling with the bark left on. . . . Few roads were 

 ever marked by the tires of a four-wheeled wagon or a tumbrel. 

 When the tobacco was ready for the inspector's mark, stout hogs- 

 heads were procured, the leaves packed in, the heads fastened in, 

 a shaft and a rude axle attached, and, one by one, they were 

 rolled along the roads for miles to the tobacco-house nearest by." 4 

 Michaux, who made a journey through the United States in 1802 

 for the express purpose of studying agricultural conditions, in 

 speaking of North Carolina, says : 



1 McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. I, p. 18. 



2 Ibid., Vol. II, p. 14. 



8 Eighth Census, Preliminary Report, p. 95. 



4 McMaster, History of the People of the United States, Vol. II, p. 4. 



