Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/589

 to the wealth of the world were made under its operation. The era upon which the commonwealth has entered will, no doubt, as time goes on, be found, in all of its principal aspects, antipodal to that long period, which, beginning in 1607, only ended in 1865. The most powerful influences of the seventeenth century, the formative age in the history of Virginia, tended directly, as has been seen, to the creation of great estates in land. At the present day, the most powerful influences tend directly to the disintegration of the system of large plantations, and this is observed even in those parts of the State where the population is compelled to rely principally upon tobacco for a subsistence. A virgin soil is no longer necessary to the production of that plant in perfection, artificial manures being now used in preparing land for its culture. Unforeseen influences, independent of those springing from the destruction of slavery, have hastened the drift towards the subdivision of the soil. The extension of the area under cultivation in the West, by lowering the prices of all agricultural products, including tobacco, has rendered hired labor unprofitable except where the soil is extremely fertile. In the present age, it is the landowner who works with his own hands who can in the long run follow the pursuits of farming and planting without a loss, and there is little reason to expect a reversion of this condition. Virginia in the twentieth century seems destined to present in its holdings a condition precisely the opposite of what was observed in the seventeenth, in the eighteenth, and in the greater part of the nineteenth. It will doubtless become a community of small landowners. That appearance of waste and neglect which accompanied the system of large plantations scents likely gradually to disappear as the area under cultivation comes to include practically the entire face of the country.