the pioneer, and about 1890 was
followed by the exploiter of the land.

In the Eastern States pioneer days ended before 1835. The land farmer
was the prevailing type throughout New England, New York, New Jersey and
Pennsylvania as early as 1800. In the South the contemporary of the land
farmer was the planter or slave holder. The modified type in the South
was due to an economic difference. The labor problem was solved in the
South by chattel slavery; in the North by the wage system. It is true
that throughout much of the South the small farmer held his own. These
men conformed to the type of the land farmer. But in the South they did
not dominate social and political life as the slave holder did. In the
Eastern States the whole social economy was, until a generation after
the Civil War, dominated by the land farmer.

The characteristics of the land farmer are: first, his cultivation of
the first values of the land. His order of life is characterized by
initial utility. He lived in a time of plenty. The abundance of nature,
which was to the pioneer a detriment, was to the land farmer a source of
wealth. He tilled the soil and he cut the timber, he explored the earth
for mines, seeking everywhere the first values of a virgin land. As
these first values were exhausted, he moved on to new territories. All
his ideas of social life were those of initial utility. The rich man was
the standard and the admired citizen. The policies of government were
dominated by the ideas of a land holding people. Individualism proceeded
on radiating lines from any given center. The development of personality
is the clue to the history of that period.

The second characteristic of the land farmer was his development of the
family group. He differed from the pioneer, whose life was lonely and
individual, in the perfection of group life in his period. He differs
from the exploiter who succeeds him in the country today in the fact
that exploitation has dissolved the family group. The experience of the
land farmer compacted and perfected the household group in the country.
The beginnings of this group life were in the pioneer period, but there
was not peace in which the family could develop nor were there
resources by which it could be endowed. The classic period of American
home life is that of the land farmer. The typical American home, as it
lives in sentiment, in literature and in idealism, is the home of the
land farmer.

Third, the land