Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/579

 and the old course was again adopted for a new area of forest land. The whole effect of tobacco culture was to extend the clearings with the utmost rapidity in the ever recurring need of a virgin soil. In this need, the system of large plantations had its origin. The tobacco planter was compelled to own a broad extent of land in wood, upon which he might encroach from year to year as the ground under cultivation lost its fertility. The advantage of possessing a wide range for his cattle, which were thrown on their own resources to gain a subsistence, was an additional motive in his appropriation of the soil.

The economic and moral influences springing from the system of large plantations thus built up were radical and supreme. Looking at that system from an economical point of view, it will be seen that it produced a spirit of wastefulness, which was fully excused by the prevailing abundance of all the necessaries of life. The whole country, even where it was most thickly inhabited, bore the aspect of a wilderness but slightly changed by the application of the axe and hoe. The methods of agriculture in the midst of such a profusion of natural wealth were, as might have been expected, rude and careless, a thoughtful and calculating treatment of natural resources being unnecessary as long as these resources were unbounded. If the estates had been limited in area, an intensive system would have been introduced. Greater care would have been employed in the use of the soil, and the forests would not have been so ruthlessly destroyed. The isolation of life which the large plantation created and promoted, discouraged the growth of towns and villages, not only by diminishing all tendency towards cooperation among the people, but also by simplifying the interests of each community. Each plantation stood apart to itself. It had its separate population; it had its own distinct round of occupations;