An Agricultural Economy.

America in the eighteenth century was an overwhelmingly agricultural economy. Most colonists spent the bulk of their working hours growing food plants and other crops, raising livestock, or hunting, fishing, fur trapping, and timbering. About 80 to 85 percent of colonial working men were farmers. Few white women worked in the fields to the same extent as men; only slave women did extensive agricultural work. Even in early colonial times a division of labor between the sexes emerged among whites, with men responsible for most agricultural production and women for domestic gardening, housekeeping, and some home manufactures. Colonial farms, at 75 to 125 acres, were much larger than those in Britain and Europe; however, few were fully cultivated. Instead the typical colonial farm household cultivated only a portion—about 15 to 35 acres—of its landholdings and consumed most of what it raised. Most farms did not specialize...