The conditions in New England were more favorable to a continuation of free labor for several reasons. In the first place the soil and climate were less favorable to the production of great staple crops such as tobacco and cot ton. Consequently there was less farming for profit and more farming for a living. In the second place there were fewer large land holders who needed an abundant supply of cheap labor. In the third place the land policy was a little less liberal. That is to say, there were more restrictions and obstacles in the way of land ownership. Land was less fre quently granted directly to individuals but gen erally to companies or groups of individuals, Who founded towns. The individual settlers generally received their grants from these companies or towns. Some of the earlier towns were settled as church communities. The formation of a town amounted practically to the organization of a church congregation and then settling as a congregation upon a tract of land and calling it a town. Weeden, in his (Social and Economic History of New England,) says that °It was the admirable economic land tenure which shaped the early towns; without this, even their religious and political systems might not have established their distinctive system of living.° The re strictions upon land ownership made it a little less easy for the landless man to become a landowner and the harshness of the climate, the sterility of the soil and the difficulty of reducing it to cultivation made landownership a little less desirable in New England than it was in the South. Consequently it was, on the one hand, easier to keep a supply of labor for those who needed it, and, on the other, there was less demand on the part of landowners for a large supply of cheap labor in New Eng land. Therefore, slavery never appealed to the New Englanders as an economic necessity as it had to the wealthy landowners of Vir ginia. Nevertheless there were, in limited numbers, both indentured servants and negro slaves in New England. But neither class ever figured prominently as factors of agri cultural production, being kept rather as domestic servants by wealthy. townsmen.
character istic of American agriculture •which grew out of the original factors of scarce labor and abundant land was the large use of labor-sav ing devices and, until recently, the general ab sence of land-saving devices. This was a logi cal and natural result. Labor being scarce and hard to get it was necessary to economize it. Agricultural machinery in America was con sequently designed almost exclusively with a view to enabling a given amount of labor to cultivate a larger area of land rather than to enable a larger population to subsist on a given area. Neither the reaper, the mower, the twine-binder, the thresher, the corn planter, the grain drill, the cultivator, the corn-husker nor any other characteristic American farm machine is calculated to increase materially the product per acre. They are designed to increase the product per man by enabling each man to cultivate more acres. In the use of labor-saving devices American farmers have shown themselves to be the most scientific and progressive farmers in the world. In the use of land-saving devices they have not kept up with some of the older and more thickly populated countries, as shown by the fact that our product per acre is noticeably lower than
theirs. However, our product per man is noticeably higher which, from the economic standpoint, is of the utmost importance. It is generally true the world over that intensive cultivation and a large product per acre are found in conjunction with the poverty of the agricultural workers. This is a necessary re sult of a small product per man.
During the period of slavery labor-saving devices were not much used in the South, mainly for the reason that slave labor was so cheap that it was not necessary to economize it. In another sense, slaves took the place of machinery.
However, further expansions of our agri cultural area must come slowly in the future as compared with the rapid expansion of the past. Then it was merely a matter of moving westward and settling upon land that was easily tillable. Hereafter, it must depend upon the progress of discovery— the discovery of meth ods of using lands hitherto considered unfit for cultivation. Vast areas of dry land west of the one hundred and second meridian and considerable areas of the South, especially in the coastal plain, may yet be reduced to profit able cultivation, besides smaller areas here and there which may yet be irrigated. Up to the present time the progress of discovery in these fields has not been rapid. A great many experiments and failures must be re corded before many successes can be achieved. If the expansion of our tillable area continues to be retarded and if, at the same time, the number of our farmers should increase, a change must come in our methods if we would maintain a large product per man. Instead of merely increasing our acreage in proportion as the number of farmers increases, we must hereafter increase the product per acre, other wise the product per man must decline.
Native Another outstanding fact regarding American agriculture is the extent to which it is a continuation of that of the aborigines. Our most important crop is maize, Indian corn or, as it is universally called in this country, corn. It exceeds in value that of any other two field crops combined. The first European settlers found it growing here under cultivation by the Indians and they learned from the Indians how to grow it. The potato is another product native to the American continent. Next to wheat and rice, these are the two most important of the world's food products. Tobacco was, until it was super seded by cotton about 1803, the principal money crop of the South and it was, like corn and the potato, a product of native agriculture.
The earliest colonists, both in the North and the South, found that the hog flourished in the woods, feeding on the mast and the roots. Accordingly, the raising of hogs was one of the first branches of animal husbandry to be developed. Corn proved to be admirably adapted to the fattening of hogs. With the development of the great prairie States of the Mississippi valley, which now form what is known as the corn belt, hog-raising increased rapidly and pork-packing became one of the leading industries of the cities of that region. From about 1830 to 1863 Cincinnati was the greatest centre of pork-packing. In the latter year it was surpassed by Chicago, which has held first place ever since.