266 Percy Wells Bidwell 



skill in some particular trade, putting it to advantage in the dull 

 seasons of their principal occupation, by doing odd jobs for their 

 neighbors. Certainly making the shoes needed by sixteen or even 

 thirty families, or building and repairing houses for forty or eighty 

 families would have been insufficient occupation for the head of a 

 family. Only by this combination of occupations, "this union of 

 manufactures and farming," as Tench Coxe called it, could they 

 have existed.^ 



The Lack of Division of Labor — Causes and Results. 



This completes the survey of the various occupations of the in- 

 habitants and the analysis of the extent of the division of labor in 

 the inland town. We may summarize the results as follows: In the 

 first place, an examination of the method of settlement in the vil- 

 lages, those diminutive points of concentration of the rural popula- 

 tion, showed that their inhabitants were farmers — producers and 

 not merely consumers of food stuffs. Then, taking up successively 

 the representatives of what we now call the professional class, the 

 business men and the artisans, or country mechanics, we reached the 

 same conclusion in regard to each, viz. ; that with the usual exception 

 of the minister, all of these 50 to 60 men^ held farms which provided 

 their food as well as other necessities of life.^ We may think, then, 

 of this whole group of persons as standing on the borderline be- 

 tween agriculture and a specialized non-agricultural occupation. 

 They were at times doctors, lawyers, innkeepers or storekeepers, 

 fullers, carpenters, or tanners, but most of the time plain farmers. 



^ This class of country mechanics offers many interesting points of compari- 

 son with and contrast to the "Lohnwerker" described by Biicher in his "Entste- 

 hung der Volkswirtschaft." 9 Aufl. pp. 170-171. The "Storer" or itinerant 

 workers which he describes there had their counterpart in the traveling weavers, 

 tailors, and cobblers who worked up the raw material of the farmers into finished 

 goods on the spot. See Earle, Alice Morse. Home Life in Colonial Days. New 

 York. 1898. pp. 212-213; and Lamed, History of Windham County, II. 395. 



The blacksmith, the most indispensable of all the rural artisans, was perhaps 

 also the most regularly employed of all. Yet very often, up to within recent years, 

 he also has been a farmer. The variety of products turned out in a smith's shop 

 may be learned from the account books of Hezekiah Bunnell which are preserved 

 in the library of the New Haven Historical Society. They cover the years 1725- 

 1764, during which he carried on his business in West Haven, Cheshire and Far- 

 mington, Conn. They also illustrate the fact that the payment for the services 

 of the artisans was often in kind. 



2 In a typical town, say of 1500 to 2000 persons. 



3 For a description of various industries carried on in farm houses see infra, 

 Chapter VI. 



