opean criticism about American farming centered on things of no
consequence to American farmers, who were selling in a world market.
True, Americans tended toward slovenly cultivation, but niceness of
method mattered little if the land yielded an abundant exportable
surplus. Americans paid less attention than Europeans to fertilizer, but
Americans at first had less need for it. Livestock, in spite of nearly
continual importations from Europe, tended to decline from a European
standpoint. Still, the animals yielded meat of a quality suitable for
export. The hardy American animals could survive in spite of casual
care. Americans had few barns and sheds, but the world market for meat
did not demand barns, stalls, and fancy feeding. American dairy cows
yielded ridiculously low volumes of milk, butter, and cheese, but dairy
products, after all, served only the resident Americans. The corn- and
mast-fed hogs of America provided ham that was equal to any in Europe.
If the European consumer bought American food, the American farmer
thought it pointless to consider the comfort and emotional well-being of
his animals.

New Englanders tended to concentrate on animals, the middle Atlantic on
grains, the upper South on tobacco, and the lower South on rice and
indigo. The Revolutionary War disrupted the marketing from the farmer's
view, but the major commercial commodities remained largely unchanged in
the years immediately after the war. Indigo declined and then
disappeared as a major export commodity, but cotton almost at once
replaced it.

In the 19th century men everywhere made great technological advances. In
America, the advances took place in a sort of reciprocal action with
three major historical series and events dominating the story: the
westward movement, urbanization, and industrialization.

The greatest westward expansion in American history took place during
the 19th century. American farmers and stockmen conquered, and almost
entirely settled, a continent. They did this in a single century,
1801-1900. Nothing quite like it had ever happened before. Starting from
a thin line of people on the eastern seaboard (with a few incursions
across the mountains as of 1800), farmers and herders pushed into a
nearly empty land, dispossessed the Indians, and exploited the country.
And in course of time the American pioneers wanted and received
political organization. California entered the Union in 1850, the Plains
states mostly