America's First Business–Agriculture

1. A Farming Settler Colony
2. The Key Variable--High Land to Labor Ratio
   1. Qualifications
      1. Context--European (not Native American) Practice
      2. Supply Not Perfectly Elastic
         1. Difficulty in Clearing
         2. Continued Native American Presence
   2. Impact
      1. Ease of Achieving Independent Landholding Status
         1. High Laborers' Wages
         2. Low Land Prices
      2. Dispersed Farmsteads
      3. Reliance on Forced Labor
         1. The Farm Family as Forced Labor
         2. The Southern Plantation
            1. White Indentured Servitude
            2. African Slavery
      4. Farming Practices
         1. Little Use of Capital
         2. "Waste" [?] of Land--"Soil-Mining"
3. Were American Farmers "Capitalist"?
   1. Alternative Views
      1. Yes--American Settlers Were Entrepreneurial From the Beginning
      2. No--Farmers Were Premodern Folk Sucked Into the Market
   2. An Attempt at Middle Ground--Farms as Both Businesses and Households
      1. Plantations--Rational, Market-Oriented Businesses
      2. Small Farms--"Safety-First"
         1. Achieve Self-Sufficiency First--THEN
         2. Sell Surplus on the Market
   3. The Attraction of the Market
      1. An Emerging Consumer Society
      2. An Expanding Atlantic Marketplace