READINGS IN RURAL SOCIOLOGY 



CHAPTER I 

 COUNTRY LIFE IN NEW ENGLAND 



FARM LIFE A CENTURY AGO 1 



ETHEL STANWOOD BOLTON 



IN the old days, when methods of work about the house and 

 farm were prized for their hoary antiquity rather than, as now, 

 for their novelty, and all farmers did as their ancestors had 

 done, there was hardly a man in the New England towns who 

 was not engaged in the pleasant occupation of farming. The 

 storekeeper and the miller plowed, harrowed, and cultivated in 

 the intervals of their other work, and the minister himself hung 

 up his gown after the last service on Sunday, and, like the rest 

 of the community, worked his land on Monday morning. A 

 century ago each town owned a farm, the use of which was al- 

 lowed the minister, rent free, as a part of his salary. 



The struggle in modern times is for the money to buy the 

 necessities of life; then there was less to buy, and each man 

 was dependent on his own exertions to get the necessities them- 

 selves from the soil or from the stock which he could afford to 

 keep. 



In those days, aside from the work which the miller or the 

 itinerant cobbler performed, each farm was a nearly self-sup- 

 porting entity, both for food and clothing. In modern times 

 the great English artist, printer, and socialist, William Morris, 

 founded a settlement which tried to be independent of the out- 

 side world, growing and making all its own necessities and 

 luxuries. The experiment was no more of a success than Mr. 

 Alcott's similar scheme at Fruitlands, in the town of Harvard. 



1 Adapted from a paper read upon several occasions, privately printed. 



1 



