Evolution of American Agriculture

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EVOLUTION of AMERICAN AGRICULTURE | By ABNER WOODRUFF, C. E. | Illustrated by Dust | Published by Agricultural Workers Industrial Union No. 400 I. W. W.

E OF THE INDUSTRIAL WORKERS OF THE WORLD

Chapter I. From Primitive Man to Agriculture

contention that we are an evolution out of another and primitive species. The "link" to complete the chain may be missing—the absolute connection of the human race with the "tree dwellers" may never be established—but, among the educated and enlightened, it will never be doubted in the least.

In the realm of Biology, the validity of the Law of Evolution cannot well be questioned, and we are quite justified in any attempt we may make to re that romantic period when the hairy denizens of the tree tops went through those changes that finally developed a creature bold enough to descend upon the ground, club in hand, and battle with the carnivorous beasts for the coveted right to live. We may well picture the first tree dweller that developed the human thumb—the thumb set so far forward on the hand and of such length that it could be opposed to the other fingers—and imagine the advantages he possessed over his fellows amid the leafy canopies. We may see him plucking the fruits and nuts with greater dexterity; swinging from limb to limb with greater certainty of grasp; clutching at the throat of his adversary with a deadlier grip; striking with the fist instead of slapping with an open paw; and, for the first time wielding a club in the enforcement of his developing will. How formidable this human handed tree dweller must have been to the other inhabitants of the forest! And how wonderful that provision of nature which transmitted the thumb on down the line of his descendants!

The law of claw and fang decided disputes among the tree dwellers and, most of all, it decided the question of mating. The human-handed one, by reason of his greater ability to fight—through a better courage, generated by a consciousness of physical superiority—compelled the reproducton of his type through the more perfect females of his kind.

Some have said that hunger first drove the developing "man" to forsake the trees and seek his food upon the ground, but I incline to the belief that the greater range of experiences possible to the human-handed one so developed his mental fac , so increased his courage, that his first excursions afield were the result of experiment, the product of pure daring, and in the nature of adventure. I like to imagine that first foray into the formerly forbidden realm—the hesitating progress outward from the shadows, club in hand—the savage dash of the wild dog—the sure swing of the weapon—the crash of wood on flesh—the yelp—the angry snarl—the crash again—blow on blow—the savage shrieks—the howls of pain—the panic stricken flight of the dog—and the new "man," bleeding, bellowing in his fury, brandishing his club, but victorious—master of the scene.

From encounter to encounter man went, contending for every inch of his progress. Gradually he became more erect upon his hips; his feet and legs changed to conform to his new environment; the set of the head upon the spinal column changed; the brain-pan enlarged; the brain developed; the infinity of new experiences produced a higher intelligence and man become truly man. At first he dwelt in caves, from which he drove the wolf and bear. He lived on fruits and nuts and roots and berries; on birds and small wild creatures which he caught with greatest cunning. Then he discovered fire and later, the art of cookery.

Wonderful! Wonderful was the discovery of fire! It is the turning point in prehistoric life. It set man completely apart from the balance of animated nature. It divorced him from the beasts and pointed the way to the conquest of the Earth. It extended his hunting grounds to the rivers, lakes and seas—for now, through cookery, he could safely eat the fish. It broadened his range of travel and robbed the winter of its frigid terrors. No wonder he worshiped the fire! Around it they gathered to prepare their food, to bask in its warmth, to moon and dream of their adventures, to counsel with their fellows, and weave fantastic notions that finally resolved themselves into the rudiments of religion.

How precious was the fire! It must not be lost! At first the aged, the young, the crippled, guarded the sacred flames; but later this duty devolved upon the woman. In the last period of her pregnancy and while the child was too young to be carried about, the woman kept the holy vigil. A natural conservator, she readily took charge of what was brought to the fire, and presently assumed command of those who came to the fire. Woman was master, and through her was born the institution of the family. Through her also was born herding, for the wounded kid, healed by her hand, became the domesticated goat and fed about the slopes near the cave under her watchful care.

In her hours of leisure she wandered by the brook and gathered the plants that she knew were good to eat. One day she pulled the weeds and grasses from around a plant that she hoped to gather later, when it should be full grown and edible. By this act Agriculture was born, and for ages following woman was the agriculturist.

So long did woman till the soil with pointed stick and stone hoe and man hurl the spear and draw the bow that a difference in the structure of male and female shoulder blades resulted, and today a woman cannot hurl a stone with any kind of precision. The memory of these ages when woman was the agriculturist comes down to us from barbaric, through historic times, for all the ancient gods of agriculture had female names and feminine attributes. All Hail—Agriculture! But better, All Hail—Woman! Woman, who has brought us the best that civilization can afford!

NO WONDER HE WORSHIPPED FIRE

Chapter II. Indian Agriculture in America

Without referring to the Aztec race (an agricultural people who inhabited Mexico and were distinct from the Indians), we may say that the inhabitant of this continent North of the Rio Grande lived in some twelve different ethnic, or radical environments which produced as many different types of Indians. Natural environment determines the nature of the food supply for man and determines also what his clothing needs to be, what shelter he requires, and, through these what his domestic industries, and personal and social customs shall be. So in the Arctic region, where the major portion of the year is intensely cold, where the country is a barren, treeless waste, we may find a people dependent entirely upon animal life for food, clothing and tent , engaging in hunting, fishing and bird nesting and without suspicion that such a thing as agriculture can exist. But in a region like the Atlantic slope of the Appalachian Mountains, where there are rich lowlands, fertile foot hills, streams full of fish, abundant plant life, great forests, and a climate favorable to agriculture, we may expect to find a people with a considerable range of choice in their food supply, clothed in the lighter skins or even in woven cotton garments, and living in hovels constructed from wood or mud or other permanent material, and rendered sedentary by the practice of some form of agriculture, though hunting and fishing are yet followed as equal sources of subsistence.

Indeed, at the time of the landing of the first colonists upon these shores from England in 1607, we find that agriculture was a main source of life for all that Indian population along the St. Lawrence and around the Great Lakes, on the Atlantic Slope, throughout the Gulf Coast country, in the great Mississippi Valley (exclusive of the Great Plains), and in the Pueblo country of the arid Southwest, though interested writers and so-called historians would have us believe that they were principally nomads and that agriculture was the exception rather than the rule. In the Arctic region, in the Yukon MacKenzie section, on the Western plains, and in the Rocky Mountains conditions were unfavaroble to Indian agriculture, while on the North Pacific Coast, in the Columbia and Frazer River regions, and in California and Oregon, animal and native plant foods were so abundant and easily available that there was no inducement for the Indian to take up the cultivation of the soil.

In this chapter it is our purpose to discuss only the agricultural Indians and especially the Eastern Indians, who first came in contact with the invading white man and who led in such resistance as the red man could oppose to the ruthless trampling of his natural rights and the certain destruction of his race.

The diet of the red men varied with the season and the food supply, ranging from fully three-fourths vegetable in the South to fully three-fourths animal in the North, and in all their agriculture, corn was the most important plant known to them. They also cultivated beans, squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, gourds, tobacco and, in the South, the cotton plant. Eighteen varieties of cultivated plants were known to them and fully one hundred other plants, uncultivated, furnished them further addition to their food supply; among these, of course, being acorns, berries, wild fruits, nuts, roots and seeds.

Not only did they cultivate these plants, but they had developed an effective storage and preservative system. Corn, beans, acorns, chestnuts, etc., were dried upon mats in the open air and stored in granaries or cribs. Onions, artichokes, corn, etc., were buried in pits. Pumpkins and squash were covered with piles of leaves and hay. Peppers, gourds, grapes, passion flower, sunflowers and tobacco were hung up in their houses. Venison was dried in the sun, fish were cured in the smoke of a greenwood fire as also were oysters, which they strung on a string. Drinks they had none, except mild infusions of leaves and willow bark which they drank as medicine. Fermented or distilled liquors (fire water) were introduced by the white men.

Corn was the principal cultivated plant of the agricultural Indians. Evidently originated in the tropics, it had found its way Northward by the adoption of the tribes, to a point far up the Ottawa River in Canada, where it was observed by Cartier, the French explorer, as early as 1534. This plant has played a great part in the economic and political history of America and may be justly said to be the greatest food producing plant now grown. The Jamestown and Plymouth colonies only became permanent as they were able to get supplies of this cereal from the Indians and by adopting its cultivation in their early fields. Also in the wars which soon succeeded the settlements by the whites, the great Iroquois nation was only defeated by the complete destruction of its corn supply; and later, after the Revolution, when Mad Anthony Wayne was sent against the Indians of the Western Reserve, he only succeeded in his mission by cutting down and burning the thousands of acres of corn fields they had cultivated in the rich river bottoms.

The Indians, then, were not the wandering people we have been taught to believe them to have been, but were really fairly well advanced agriculturists, though they retained many of the characteristics of their former nomadic life. We now know that they practiced communal farming and lived in large villages surrounded by their extensive fields. The average per family seems to have been from two to two and one-half acres and the production of corn an average of about forty bushels per acre. And, when we consider that the soil was broken by means of wooden or stone mattocks and crude wooden spades, and that the cultivating was mostly done by the women and children with hoes made from clam shells and the shoulder blades of the bear and moose, we are forced to realize that they were a remarkably industrious people, and that, had they known the use of metals, they would have compared most favorably in productive ability with the Europeans who came to supplant them.

The cultured methods of the Indians have been but little changed by modern agriculture, and one tool of their invention, the "husking peg," is still in use wherever corn is harvested by "armstrong" methods, a fact that the boys of the A. W. O. are likely to appreciate.

An eminent writer on agriculture gives the following agricultural achievements of the Indians:

They reproduced wild plants under control.

They propagated cultivated varieties of wild plants.

They practiced plant breeding by seed selection.

They planted seeds in hills, to give light, soil space and room for cultivation.

They used crop fertilizers, such as fish buried in the hill with the seeds.

They practiced good tillage.

They practiced clean cultivation.

They practiced multiple cropping (corn, beans, sunflowers, etc., in the same field.)

They made clearings by girdling and burning.

They invented the corn crib.

They discovered the narcotic effect of tobacco.

They cured tobacco by artificial heat.

They made syrup and sugar by evaporating sap.

They preserved fruits, etc., with syrup, wild honey, etc.

In the face of these achievements, who can doubt that the red man could have assimilated the civilization of the whites? Evidently there was no real effort on the part of the colonists, even of the hypen-religious Puritans, to find a reasonable basis on which the two races could work out a common destiny. The spirit of exploitation was rampant and the weaker, less advanced Indians went down before the superior shrewdness and unscrupulous ruthlessness of his Caucasian adversary. The history of the white man's dealings with the red man is a record of his cruelty, exploitation and dirty chicanery that bourgeois historians try hard to conceal, its last monumental infamy being the destruction of the buffalo during the seventies, by which act the Indians of the West were forced upon the reservation and reduced from freemen to that curious position of a "ward of the government"—"neither man nor boy; just hobbledehoy."

Chapter III. Agricultural Periods

The second period, from 1783 to 1830, saw a rapid spread of the agricultural population across the mountains into the Ohio, Cumberland and Tennessee Valleys and even beyond the Mississippi to the edge of the great plains. A public land policy was adopted by the Federal Government, cotton became the dominant agricultural product of the South and made slavery a paying and therefore a characteristically Southern institution, and the first efforts to apply science to agriculture were made. During this period, as in the first one, agriculture was practically self-sufficing, though in the South the specialization on cotton caused a considerable dependence on other regions for supplies that otherwise would have been produced at home.

In the third period, from 1830 to 1865, occurred an almost complete transformation of agriculture. The rapid rise of the factory system in the North, due to the use of steam and a flood of labor saving inventions with a consequent transfer of home industries into the shops, the invention of agricultural machinery such as the reaper, mower, thresher, etc., the extension of the railway system and the development of the prairie states caused an era of specialization which transferred agriculture into the commercial stage. Crops were now grown primarily for the market and incidentally for the use of the farmer and his family, a reversal of the former process. The new necessities of the farmer gave him a new view of his industry and in his effort to meet the new situation he turned to agricultural societies, fair associations and the scientific breeding of live stock, all of which were of wonderful assistance in the development of the country by demonstrating its resourcefulness.

The fourth period was the era of expansion into the Far West (1865–1887), and was remarkably stimulated by the Homestead Acts of 1862 and 1864, the disbanding of the Armies of the Civil War, the transformation of Southern farming due to the abolition of slavery, the invention of the twine binder and the roller process of milling flour, the exten of the railroads to the Pacific Coast, the greater extention of the interior railway systems, the development of the cattle ranches of the West after the extinction of the buffalo and the cooping up of the Indians on the reservations, and a new flood of immigration from European ports. Manufacture experienced an equal expansion at this time and more of the home industries were transferred from the farm to the factory and the shop.

The fifth period, which began in 1887, is now practically completed by the establishment of the Rural Credit or Land Bank system throughout the country. This period has been an era of agricultural reorganization. The easily available public lands were exhausted and intensive methods of cultivation came into vogue in the Eastern and Central sections with a rapid rise in land values. State and Federal schemes for irrigation and drainage were put through to increase the acreage of arable lands. Agricultural colleges were established to spread scientific cultural methods so that the food supply might keep pace with the demands of an increasing industrial population, research work in the realm of agriculture was vigorously prosecuted by numerous experiment stations under State and Federal control, and the period closes with the establishment of a separate system of finance designed to place the agricultural capitalist on a par with the commercial capitalist in the money markets of the world by modilizing and standardizing the basis of his credit.

Chapter IV. Colonial Period (1620-1783)

Here is the list of tools supplied a Virginia settler with six persons in his family: :

Agricultural tools—5 broad hoes, 5 narrow hoes, 3 shovels, 2 spades, 2 hand bills, 2 pick axes or mattocks.

Clearing tools—5 felling axes.

House and domestic tools—2 broad axes, 2 hatchets, 2 steel saws, 2 hand saws, 1 whip saw, 2 ham

, 2 augurs, 2 piercers, 3 gimlets, 6 chisels, 2 frows, 1 grindstone, nails of all sizes.

Compare the agricultural tools listed above with the tractor, pulling its gang of plows, harrow, seeder, and land packer; also the mower, combined harvester, corn binder, potato digger and threshing machine, and you have some idea of the great advance that three hundred years of effort and invention have brought to modern man. It certainly would be a "boob" that would start in to buck the modern game with a Virginia settler's outfit. It's easy to see the "water tank" where he would "hit the grit."

The Indians were communal in their method of life and usually cultivated their fields in common, and the Virginia settlers tried the communal way for a couple of years, but, finding themselves unsuited to such a mode of labor, resorted to individual ownership about 1609 or 1610.

There were three methods of acquiring land; first by purchase of a share of stock in the colonization company; second, by some act of meritorious service; and third, by "Head Right" (paying the passage of some person from England to the Colony). The share of stock cost $62.50 and entitled the holder to one hundred acres in the first subdivision and another one hundred acres in the second subdivision. Great tracts of land were secured to individuals who were able to buy a large number of shares, and much of the early trouble with the Indians arose over the efforts of these shareholders to drive the red men off these purchased holdings, the redskin not being regarded as endowed with any title, either natural or acquired.

Ministers of the church, physicians, government officials and employers of the company were given one hundred acres each for meritorious service and could secure the second allotment by the erection of a house within three years. Any person who paid the passage of a laborer, either bond or free, to the colony, received fifty acres by "Head Right," and after 1618 this became the common method of obtaining land. As labor was in great demand, the practice became a system of investing in labor and having a piece of land thrown in to make the bargain a good one. Finally the payment to the Secretary of an amount equal to the passage money of a laborer would secure title to a tract of land and "Head Rights" passed by purchase.

Wherever there are free lands in abundance free labor is difficult to secure. The laborer can usually make as much working for himself, if he has an outfit, as anyone else is willing to pay him, and this was especially so in Virginia. Laborers came under bond to work a certain time to repay their passage money and pay for tools, seeds and provisions to make a start for themselves, and when this time was up became farmers on their own account, so there was really no paid labor in the colony worthy of mention. When a Dutch ship landed a cargo of negro slaves at Jamestown in 1619, the labor problem was practically solved for the colonists. It also solved the question of small land holdings, for we find records showing larger and larger tracts being patented every year. In 1619 the patents averaged about one hundred acres; in 1626, about one hundred and fifty acres; in 1636, about three hundred and fifty acres; in 1642, about five hundred and sixty acres; in 1650, about six hundred and seventy-seven acres, and from 1666 to 1679 they averaged eight hundred and ninety acres. The slaves not only drove out the small landholders, but profoundly effected the economic and therefore political history of the whole country, and especially the South. And in this connection it can be shown that "cattle ranching" originated in Virginia rather than in Texas or the Far West, for the small planters, having failed in competition with their slave holding neighbors, retired to the foothills beyond the colony lands, taking their cattle with them, and in a few years had large herds grazing in the highlands, where they held annual "round ups" and marked and branded in genuine "cow-puncher" style.

Agricultural development moved slowly in Virginia, even if they did have the slaves, and in 1650 there were only one hundred and fifty plows in the whole colony, though the population was well over the fifteen thousand mark. Yet in 1631 the people were able to offer to sell corn in the Dutch settlements, and in New England tobacco was their principal export crop, and as early as 1640 they attempted to restrict the crop to 1,500,000 pounds in order to keep up the price. Cotton was well known to the Virginian, but did not assume any great importance with them until about 1750, at which time it became important to all the South, though its great commercial importance did not come about until the end of the Revolutionary War.

The raising of cattle reached large proportions in Virginia and the breeding of horses was taken up early in the history of the colony, but for a long time saddle horses were bred in preference to drafters. Sheep, goats and swine did well and became numerous.

The colonies to the south of Virginia have about the same agricultural history, with the same system of land holding, the same labor problem, and the same general agricultural system. Cattle raising was a large industry with them. They raised wheat, tobacco, and corn, and, of the latter, exported 100,000 bushels from South Carolina alone in 1792. Forest products, such as tar, pitch, turpentine and lumber were exported from North Carolina, and on the basis of the rice and indigo exportation, Charleston became the largest and wealthiest city of the South.

Large tracts of land and a baronial style of life was the rule in the South. Small towns were unknown, the great plantations being practically self-sustaining and the "planters" conducted their commercial operations directly with England, the West Indies or the Northern colonies.

New England never was agriculturally independent. She had to rely somewhat upon other regions for a portion of her food supply, yet agriculture was always large among her economic interests.

The early New England land system was based upon the common ownership and use of a tract of land by a number of church members. The meeting house was the center of their community and only those who adhered to the faith were citizens. They allotted the citizens portions of meadow, plow lands and grazing and forest lands, together with a right to the commons which everybody used. Many Indian communal customs were adopted by them, though the most of their customs are directly traceable to their religion.

They learned to cultivate and fertilize corn from the Indians, also beans, pumpkins, artichokes, etc., and themselves introduced wheat, rye, buckwheat and barley from the mother country. The custom of seeding worn fields to grass in order to recuperate originated in New England and seems to be the particular contribution the Puritans made to the art and science of agriculture.

The quasi communal customs of log rollings, house-raisings, husking bees and quilting parties, together with spelling matches and literary societies and singing schools seem to be typically New England productions, arising not only out of their common religious bond, but out of the economic fact that there was practically no non-land-owning laboring class. Hence co-operation in the things too heavy or too tedious for one man and his family became a custom of their communities.

In the matter of plowing, the plowman usually went about breaking up the land for his neighbor, and in some towns a bounty was paid to anyone who would buy a plow and keep it in repair so that the neighborhood plowing could be done. Their other tools were the harrow, the spade, the hoe and a clumsy wooden fork.

Cattle raising never became a large industry in New England on account of the difficulty of securing forage for beef cattle, but dairying did become important, the foundation for their herds being imported from Denmark about 1633. Little attention was paid to horse breeding, as oxen were the principal draft animals, though a breed of pacing horses were developed in Rhode Island, but they disappeared as a distinct breed by the year 1800.

The middle colonies contained a mixed population of European peoples, with several systems of agriculture. The land tenure was similar to New England, except in New York where the Dutch feudal "Patron System" prevailed. The holdings of these patrons ran up as high as 100,000 acres and form the basis of many of the great New York estates of today. The patrons acted as local governors, securing immigrants to rent their lands at low rentals, collecting taxes and supporting the schools and churches.

Wage labor on the farms did not exist to any extent in these colonies. Slaves and bond servants only worked for a master. Every one else had a small free hold of his own or else was a craftsman and kept his own shop in the little town.

The farming implements were practically the same as those used in New England and the South. Among the crops, wheat held the leading place and the Pennsylvania millers had a great reputation for the excellence of their flour. Cabbage, turnips, potatoes, apples, peaches, watermelons, buckwheat and corn are mentioned largely in their agricultural reports, and the Swedish traveler Kalm reports the irrigation of meadows in Pennslyvania in 1748, and the following of land to grasses, as was the practice in New England. Cattle, horses, hogs, sheep and poultry were plentiful in all these colonies, though there does not seem to have been any effort to standardize a breed or get a better stock.

Many intelligent writers have condemned the wasteful methods of colonial agriculture, but they have failed to consider the fact that land was cheaper than labor and we only economize in that of which we have a scarcity. It was cheaper to plow a new and fertile field than to manure and intensely cultivate an exhausted one. The fertilizer problem was left to future generations.

Whatever may be said, the colonist met his task squarely and fairly and so well did he seek out the possibilities of the land that only one important crop (sorghum) has been introduced to our agriculture since his day.

DRAY PLOUGH

A plough used in the old days. In summer, when the ground was hard, this contrivance was very difficult to use because the point was constantly flying out of the ground. The plough was set higher or lower by means of wedges.

Chapter V. The Period of Western Expansion (1783-1830)

Apparently there never was any other idea in the American mind than that the public domain should become private property as rapidly as possible. And, since the colonists were casting off all the major incumbrances of Kingly rule and feudalism, the Ordinance of 1787 is of the greatest importance, for it not only provided for republican government and made provisions against slavery, but determined the form of land tenure in the public domain. Land was to be held in "fee simple" to be freely transferred by bargain and sale, and the estates of persons dying without will were to be divided among their heirs in equal parts. This ordinance not only determined the form of land ownership for the West, but the old states, which yet had feudal tenures, changed their forms to be in accord with it.

The only question that ever arose was, whether the transfer of land from public to private ownership should be strictly for financial benefit or should be made on social considerations; that is, whether the national treasury should be enriched or whether the settler should be primarily benefitted and the government reap its returns by the early improvement of the property and its consequent rise in taxable value. The Revolutionary War debt caused the first idea to prevail for a time, but gradually the results of such a policy became apparent and there was a change to the other view and the social motive came to predominate altogether.