Page:Evolution of American Agriculture (Woodruff).djvu/73

Rh was open to every man who had sufficient knowledge of agriculture and enough energy to devote himself to the conquest of the soil.

So far as the white man was concerned, the perriodperiod [sic] prior to the Civil War was an era when the farm hand was really an apprentice to the trade. The tools of agriculture were crude and the cultural processes were simple. The farmer's son, the immigrant and the bondsman worked for wages only so long as was necessary to obtain the needful instruction or to save the price of a few acres of land and secure the tools of the trade. When he had these, he became a farmer on his own account, either by the purchase of land in his home neighborhood or by migrating Westward to less settled regions.

The relations of the farmer and his hired man were, therefore those of social equals. The farm hand resided with the farmer as a member of his family—the old guild relationship of master and journeyman persisted longer on the farms than in any other industry—and, due to this near social equality, the class antagonisms so characteristic of capitalist society were very slow in developing.

But with the introduction of machinery on the farms, and the development of commercial or competitive farming, the condition of the rural population began to change. The cost of the machines with which the farmer could engage in the new farming and hold his own on a competitive market so greatly increased the capital necessary to embark upon the venture that the farm hand was forced to remain longer at his apprenticeship—the age at which men