It was easy to obtain land. After 1820 it could be bought from the government of the United States at $1.25 per acre, it could be rented--sometimes for one peck of corn per acre per year(442)--, or the claim of a squatter could be purchased. When Peter Cartwright moved from Kentucky to Illinois in 1824, he gave as reasons for moving the fact that he had six children and but one hundred and fifty acres of land, and that Kentucky land was high and rising in value; the increase of a disposition in the South to justify slavery; the distinction in Kentucky between young people reared without working and those who worked; the danger that his four daughters might marry into slave families; and the need of preachers in the new country.(443) The land being obtained, the first cultivation was difficult. Writers often give the idea that after a year or two the land which had been heavily timbered was left free from trees, stumps, or roots, but many a pioneer plowed for twenty years among the stumps. Stump fields are today no novelty in Illinois, and farming has not retrograded. Usually the settler's first need was a crop, and in order to hasten its production the trees were girdled, a process which might either precede or follow the planting, according to the time of year in which the immigrant arrived. If prairie land was plowed six horses, or their equivalent of power in oxen, were required for the first breaking, and a summer's fallow usually followed in order to allow the roots to decay. In 1819 five dollars per acre was paid for the first plowing of the prairie, and three or four dollars for the second.(444)
Agricultural products exhibited considerable variety, although corn was the chief article raised, because it furnished food for man and beast, it gave a large yield, and it was more easily harvested than wheat. Wheat was raised without any great degree of care as to its culture, being frequently sowed upon ground that was poorly prepared, and being threshed in a most wasteful manner. Both wheat and flour were exported. Flour-mills, often of a rude sort, were found at inconveniently long distances from each other. Ferdinand Ernst, traveling in 1819, found a turbine wheel at the mill of Mr. Jarrott, a few miles from St. Louis, and mentioned the fact as a peculiar feature.(445) Some of the settlers in Sangamon county had to go sixty miles to mill in 1824.(446) In 1830 the first flour mill in northern Illinois was erected on Fox River. It was operated by the same power that ran a saw-mill, and the millstones were boulders, laboriously dressed by hand.(447) Tobacco of excellent quality was grown, and sometimes formed an article of export.(448) Cotton was an important article for home consumption. In the early years of the state hopes were entertained that cotton might become an article of export, but it was found that the crop required so much labor as to make raising it in large quantities unprofitable. It was after 1830, however, that it ceased to be cultivated in the state. It was raised at least as far north as the present Danville, about one hundred and twenty-five miles south of Chicago.(449) A woman whose parents moved to Sangamon county in 1819 says that when in that county they raised, picked, spun, and wove their own cotton. The children had to seed the cotton before the fire in the long winter evenings. The importance of cotton as a factor in inducing immigration may have been considerable.(450) Large quantities of castor oil were made in the state from home-grown castor beans.(451) Vegetables were large, although not always of good flavor.(452) Peaches, apples, pears, quinces and cherries were cultivated successfully, while grapes, plums, crabapples, persimmons, mulberries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries grew wild.(453) An agricultural society was formed in 1819, a chief purpose being to rid the state of stagnant water.(454)