This book deals with the evolution of American agriculture, the effect of machinery both upon production and rural population; and the last chapter attempt to show the development of a distinctly proletarian class upon the farms. "Five periods mark the agricultural history of the United States since the advent of the white man. The first or Colonial period extends to the end of the Revolutionary War and records but slight technical advances in the art of agriculture... The second period, from 1783 to 1830, saw a rapid spread of the agricultural population across the mountains into the Ohio,...