The Good Old Days
“Much has been said about decadent agricultural conditions in Vermont. Tears are shed over her abandoned farms and the emigration of her children to the cities. Complaint is made that she is lagging behind other states. We are told her cultivated lands have decreased by half in fifty years. Mention is made of the good old days when a million sheep were pastured on her hills….The census of 1850 may be taken as a fair indication of the good old days before the Civil War and the opening up of the West. How does it compare with the census of 1920?” (Zephine Humphrey, Vermont, A Comparison: 1850…1920, The Vermonter, Vol.29 No.3, 1924).
Ah yes, even in 1920 the young were abandoning the farms for the cities. And perhaps, by comparison with any other time 1850 was indeed the good old days that have never been seen and enjoyed since. Railroads, still crude and inefficient, had just came into Vermont but were yet confined to the major river valleys. The web of rail that ultimately wove through every town was yet to be built. The pace of life was still, necessarily, dictated by the horse.
Then came the Civil War and everything changed. Though the battles came no closer than southern Pennsylvania thousands of Vermont boys went off to do their duty and with luck returned in one piece cloaked in glory and a couple dollars mustering out money. The war, as all wars, launched the economy into high gear. At least for the winning side. By 1870 factories were belching smoke over the entire North as the economy rushed headlong into the Industrial Age on this side of the Atlantic. Most Vermonters were long gone from the fields and were now selling their labor for far less return in the factories and shops, mills and enterprises of the ownership class.
But bidding the farm farewell was not a phenomenon in 1920 or even 1870. In a history of a much earlier time Kenneth Lockridge* writes about the history of Dedham, Massachusetts. Dedham was founded on a grant from the King as a sort of Christian community and was thus able to screen new settlers wishing to settle there. When a new family was accepted they were given ownership of 50 acres of land to farm for their sustenance. Dedham at the time was much larger than the Dedham of today. About ten new towns were eventually divided from the original grant. After about 20 years there were no more 50 acre parcels that could be carved out with enough arable land to support a family. Families were typically large then but only one child, usually the eldest male, would inherit the farm. The daughters had to marry out and younger sons had to find their own way. They were leaving the farm for the towns and cities in 1650 and ever since. That our children of Brattleboro today too are leaving and searching for distant fields of opportunity is a long, natural and continuing consequence within the larger economic fabric of capitalism. It is also a failure of local planning that is repressed to serve the interests of profit. It was also the beginning of another consequence of capitalism, poverty.Without a land base disenfranchised labor had to take whatever wages were offered. That is a story for another time.
Another interesting tidbit mentioned: if one ever wondered why towns across New England were all about the same physical size it is because they were drawn to encompass an area within which, traveling by horse and wagon, a settler could reach the town center for business and social needs and get home again the same day.
* Kenneth Lockridge; A New England Town, the First Hundred Years of Dedham, Massachuesetts 1636-1736
