control over them, a control which was assured both by annual
elections and the full participation of the settlers in the
decision-making process. The will of the majority prevailed, and that
will was expressed through a community consensus reached by the full
participation of political equals. It was neither radical nor
revolutionary, but it was typical of the American colonial experience.
The Fair Play settlers had not "jumped the gun" on independence,
although they participated in the movement. They did not rebel against a
ruling aristocracy. They simply governed themselves.

Self-determination, as we have already stated, includes the right of the
people to decide upon their own economic institutions. This right was
asserted on the farmers' frontier of the West Branch. With free land
available to those who worked it, provided the neighbors and the Fair
Play men approved, economic opportunity was shared by the Scotch-Irish,
English, German, Scots, Irish, Welsh, and French settlers.[14] This
sharing, in itself, was a demonstration of economic democracy.

The labor system, too, was an affirmation of the democratic ideal.
Because free land was available in the Fair Play territory, neither
slavery nor involuntary servitude existed in this region, although it
was found in immediately adjacent areas.[15] Free labor, family labor to
be more exact, was the system employed in this portion of the West
Branch Valley. Noticeable, too, was the spirit of cooperation in such
enterprises as cabin-raisings, barn-raisings, harvesting, cornhuskings
and the like. This mutual helpfulness was characteristic of the frontier
and obviated the necessity of any enforced labor system.

Tenancy was occasionally practiced in the Fair Play territory, although
it appears that the tenant farmer suffered no feelings of inferiority,
if the following case is any example:

... Peter Dewitt ... leased the land in question to William
McIlhatton as a Cropper, who took possession of it after Huggins
left it: That the Terms of the Lease were that McIlhatton should
possess the Land about two or three Years, rendering hold of the
Crops to be raised unto Peter Dewitt, who was to find him a Team and
farming Utensils: That the Lease was in Writing and Lodged with a
certain Daniel Cruger who lived in the Neighborhood at that
Time.[16]

Sometime later, McElhattan obtained the lease from Cruger and sold "his
right" to William Dunn