Birth and Childhood, n 



of these men were obliged to eke out a livelihood as 

 carpenters, masons, shoemakers, and blacksmiths. A 

 Yankee versatility had been developed in their race by 

 sheer necessity. It was not only common, for example, 

 to weave cloth at home, but also to build the loom for 

 it at home. Adaptability and ingenuity had an earning 

 power denied to routine work of any kind. " Handi- 

 ness" was universal; machinery had as yet made but 

 small encroachment on handicraft skill. Capital was 

 then the junior partner of labour, and these men were 

 more independent, more individualized, than men of 

 similar grade to-day. Special aptitudes were not sel- 

 dom discovered in the wide variety of work set before 

 every man as a farmer, builder, machinist, repairer. 

 Yet while intelligence was undoubtedly quickened 

 by this almost total absence of division of labour, 

 the financial results then and there were not en- 

 couraging. Times were very bad in rural New York 

 when Vincent Youmans came to settle in Green- 

 field. His house and lot had cost him four hundred 

 dollars, of which he had had to borrow two hundred 

 and forty dollars. His trade of wagon making did 

 not prove particularly profitable. Money was not to 

 be had for wagons, so as opportunity offered they 

 had to be traded for supplies, or for articles which on 

 occasion could be exchanged for supplies. Making 

 ends meet involved much planning, incessant toil, 

 ceaseless anxieties. At the end of ten years four sons 

 and a daughter had been born to the parents,* who 

 in the meantime had united with the Congregational 

 Church. The easily satisfied personal wants, the pref- 



* Then, after an interval of nine years, the sixth child. William Jay 

 Youmans, the present editor of the Popular Science Monthly, was born in 

 1839. The seventh and last child, Eliot, was born in 1841. 



