102. Individual Pioneering.—The pioneer American colonies were group settlements, but they produced a new race of individual pioneers for the West. Occasionally a whole community emigrated, but usually hardy, venturesome individuals pushed out into the wilderness, opening up the frontier continually farther toward the setting sun. By the brookside the pioneer made a clearing and erected his log house; later on the unbroken prairie he built a rude hut of sod. On the land that was his by squatter's right or government claim he planted and reaped his crops. About him grew up a brood of children, and as the years passed, others like himself followed in the path that he had made, single men to work for a time as hired laborers, families to break new ground, until the countryside became sparsely settled and the nucleus of a village was made.
Such pioneers were hard-working people, lonely and introspective. They knew little of the comforts and none of the refinements of life. They prescribed order and administered justice at the weapon's point. They were emotional in religion. They required the stimulus of abundant food and often of strong drink to goad them to their various tasks. Frontier pioneering in America reproduced many of the features of former ages of primitive life and compressed centuries into the space of a generation. It was distinctly individualistic, and needed socializing. The large farm or cattle-range kept men apart, the freedom of the open country attracted an unruly population, and in consequence frontier life tended to rough manners and lawlessness. Isolation and loneliness produced despondency and inertia, and tended to individual and group degeneration.
Even in a growing village men and women of this type had few social institutions. There was little time for schooling or recreation. A circuit-riding preacher held religious services once or twice a month, and in certain regions at a certain season religious enthusiasm found vent in a camp-meeting, but religion often had little effect on habits and morals. Local government and industry were home-made. The settlers brought with them customs and traditions which they cherished, but in the mingling of pioneers from different districts there was continual change and fusion, until the West became the most enterprising and progressive part of the nation, continually open to new ideas and new methods. There was a wholesome respect for church and school, and as villages grew the settlers did not neglect the organization and housing of such institutions; store, mill, and smithy found their place as farther east, and later the lawyer and physician came, but the pioneer could do without them for a time. Inventiveness and individual initiative were characteristics of the rural people, made necessary by their remoteness and isolation.
103. The Development of the West.—With increasing settlement the rural pioneer gave place to the farmer. It was no longer necessary for him to break new ground, for arable acres could be purchased; neither was it necessary to turn from one occupation to another to satisfy personal or household needs, for division of labor provided specialists. Hardship gave way to comfort, for the land was fertile and experience had taught its values for the cultivation of particular crops. Loneliness and isolation were felt less severely as neighbors became more frequent and travelled roads made communication easier. Group life expanded and institutions became fixed. Every neighborhood had its school-teacher, and even the academy and college began to dot the land. Churches of various denominations found root in rural soil, and a settled minister became more common. A general store and post-office found place at the cross-roads, and the permanent machinery of local government was set up. Out of the forest clearings and prairie settlements evolved the prosperous farm life that has been so characteristic of the Middle West.
But the prosperous life of these rural communities has not remained unchanged. Speculation in land has been creating a class of non-resident agricultural capitalists and tenant cultivators, and has been transforming the type of agricultural population over large sections of country. Soil exhaustion is leading to abandonment of the poorest land and is compelling methods of scientific agriculture on the remainder. These conditions are producing their own social problems for the rural community.
READING REFERENCES
Small and Vincent: Introduction to the Study of Society, pages 112-126.
Cheyney: Industrial and Social History of England, pages 31-56.
Cubberley: Rural Life and Education, pages 1-62.
Wilson: Evolution of the Country Community, pages 1-61.