ed beyond
the Egyptians of the times of the Pyramids. The wheat was reaped with
sickles or cradles and either flailed out or else trampled out by cattle
and horses, usually on a dirt floor in the open air. Washington
estimated in 1791 that the average crop of wheat amounted to only eight
or ten bushels per acre, and the yield of corn was also poor.

So much emphasis was laid upon tobacco that many planters failed to
produce food enough. Some raised none at all, with the result that
often both men and animals were poorly fed, and at best the cost of food
and forage exhausted most of the profits. A somewhat similar condition
exists in the South to-day with regard to cotton.

Almost no attention was paid to conserving the soil by rotation of
crops, and even those few planters who attempted anything of the sort
followed the old plan of allowing fields to lie in a naked fallow and to
grow up in noxious weeds instead of raising a cover crop such as clover.
Washington wrote in 1782: "My countrymen are too much used to corn
blades and corn shucks; and have too little knowledge of the profit of
grass land." And again in 1787:

"The general custom has been, first to raise a crop of Indian corn
(maize) which, according to the mode of cultivation, is a good
preparation for wheat; then a crop of wheat; after which the ground is
respited (except for weeds, and every trash that can contribute to its
foulness) for about eighteen months; and so on, alternately, without any
dressing, till the land is exhausted; when it is turned out, without
being sown with grass-seeds, or reeds, or any method taken to restore
it; and another piece is ruined in the same manner. No more cattle is
raised than can be supported by lowland meadows, swamps &c. and the
tops and blades of Indian corn; as very few persons have attended to
growing grasses, and connecting cattle with their crops. The Indian corn
is the chief support of the labourers and their horses."

As for the use of fertilizer, very little was attempted, for, as
Jefferson explained, "we can buy an acre of new land cheaper than we can
manure an old one." It was this cheapness of land that made it almost
impossible for the Virginians to break away from their ruinous
system--ruinous, not necessarily to themselves, but to future
generations. Conservation was then a doctrine that was little preached.
Posterity could take care of itself. Only a few persons like Washington
realized their duty to t