The transition from the mixed or diversified farming of the Quaker community to the special and particular farming of the mixed community is written in the growth of the dairy industry, which in the year 1900 was the one industry of the Hill. In 1800 dairy products were only beginning to emerge from a place in the list of products of the Quaker Hill lands to a single and special place as the only product of salable value. While the Hill people constituted a community dependent on itself and sufficient unto itself, the exceptional fitness of the "heavy clay soil" to the production of milk, butter and cheese did not assert itself, and wheat, rye, flax, apples, potatoes were raised in large quantities and sold; but in the period of opening communication with the world in general, exactly in proportion as the Hill shared in the growth of commerce, by so much did the dairy activities supplant all other occupations. The order of this emergence is a significant commentary upon the opening of roads and the development of transportation. The stages are: first, cheese and butter; second, fat cattle; and third, milk. At the end of the Quaker community, when the best roads were of the east and west directions, and Poughkeepsie was the market-place, cheese and butter were made for a "money crop," by the women, who retained the money for their own use.

There is a story told in the Taber and Shove families, which prettily shows the customs in the Quaker century. Anne Taber, wife of Thomas Taber, substantial pioneer at the north end of the Hill, "had a fine reputation as a cheese maker." Being a New England woman, she was of the few who in Revolutionary days were in sympathy with the Colonies, and she gave forth that she would present a cheese to the first general officer who should visit the neighborhood. "One day, being summoned to the door," writes one of her descendants, "she was greatly surprised to find a servant of General Washington, with a note from him claiming, under conditions of the promise, the cheese. Of course it was sent, and the General had opportunity to test her skill in that domestic art."[31]

The Taber family did not preserve that note; but in the Treasury Department of the United States, among Washington's memoranda of expenditures, is the item under date of Nov. 6, 1778, "To Cash paid servant for bringing cheese from Mr. Taber, 16 shillings." It would seem that the fame of Anne Taber's cheeses had won her a market with the officers at Headquarters, for sixteen shillings was payment "for bringing cheese" in large quantity, and the date is six weeks after the arrival of Washington for his stay in the vicinity.

In the ledger of the Merritt store, under date of Nov. 6, 1772, Thomas Taber, Esq., is credited as follows: "By 29 cheses wd. 484 lb. at 6d., £12 2s." In that year Thomas Taber, Esq., satisfied his account with an ox, £6 16s.; cash, £10; three pounds and nine ounces of old pewter, 4s. 6d.; seven hogs, £20 11s. 6d., and the above 29 cheeses. So that approximately one-fourth of the "money crop" of this substantial farmer was in the form of a dairy product. In the year 1895, the average Quaker Hill farm was producing, as will be shown in Chapter III, Part III, ninety per cent. of dairy product, namely milk.

The second phase of the industry proper to Quaker Hill was that of raising fat cattle. This culminated at the end of the period of the Quaker Community. In this industry were laid the foundations of some large fortunes. It brought in its day more money into the neighborhood than any other occupation had ever brought. It disappeared with the coming of the railroad into the valley, bringing, in refrigerator cars, meat from western lands, and killed in Chicago. Then the cattle were fattened on these hills, in the rich grass, and driven to New York to be killed and sold there.

In "Some Glimpses of the Past," Miss Taber says: "But the chief business of most farmers was the fatting of cattle. The cattle were generally bought when from two to three years old, usually in the fall, kept through the winter and the following summer fattened and sold. They were the only things that did not have to go to the river to reach the market. From all over the country they were driven to New York on foot, and the road through the valley was the main thoroughfare for them. Monday was the market day in New York and all started in time to reach the city by Saturday. From Pawling the cattle were started on Thursday, and those from greater distances planned to reach this part of their journey on that day. It used to be said that the dealers could tell what the market would be in New York on the following Monday by watching the cattle that passed through Pawling on Thursday. The cattle were collected and taken to the city by drovers; theirs was a great business in those days. Hotels or taverns were provided for their accommodation at frequent intervals along the road. Ira Griffin was a drover and Mr. Archibald Dodge remembers when a boy going to New York with him and his cattle, walking all the way. There were also droves of cattle other than fat ones, on the road, some called store cattle, and the books of Mr. Benjamin V. Haviland, who kept one of the taverns, show that in the year 1847 there had been kept on his place 27,784 cattle, 30,000 sheep and 700 mules, and it is said that occasionally there would be 2,000 head between his tavern and that of John Preston's in Dover. When Mr. Albert J. Akin was a young man he was considered an expert judge and buyer of steers for fattening, and generally had the finest herd of fat cattle."

This reference is to the business at its height and applies to the years 1800-1850. In the books of John Toffey's store are frequent references to the business.

Interesting material is furnished for the study of the period of transition, in the records of the store kept by John Toffey at Site No. 53. These old day-books and ledgers are incomplete, but they cover spaces of time in the years 1814, 1824, 1833; and their account of the purchases made by John Toffey's customers furnishes a record, we may suppose, of the goods brought into the households on the Hill at that time, from other communities; as well as the actual exchange of commodities on the Hill, where at that time diversified industries were carried on.

The growth of trade in these respects, from the period 1814-1816 to the period 1824-1833 will be considered in four lines, as it is exhibited in the commodities: first of Costume, second of Food and Medicine, and third of Tools and Material for Industry, fourth, of House-furnishings. It is assumed that John Toffey kept a representative store, and that the growth in his trade corresponded to the growth in the commercial interchange in the community.

In 1814-1816 the imported goods kept and sold by John Toffey are cloth (perhaps in part locally manufactured), indigo, thread, cambric, penknives, knitting needles, spelled "nittenneedels," plaster, fine salt, molasses, tea, apple-trees, nutmeg, shad and occasionally other fish. The list is brief, and its proportion to the other commodities sold in the store evidences the simplicity of a community dependent chiefly upon itself, and living a life of rudeness and content.

Among prices which change in the twenty years recorded in John Toffey's books are those of molasses which was in 1814-1816 $2.00 per gallon, and fell to $1.25 and in 1824 to 35c. per gallon. "Tobago" was sold in 1814 at $2.75 per pound, and later for 62c. Flour was sold in 1814 for $18 per barrel, or 9c. per pound; wool hats at $4; fine salt 10c. per pound; plaster $3.25 per hundredweight; boots at $9.00; tea at $2.75 per pound.

A day's work for a man in 1814-1816 was from $1.00 per day for ordinary work, to $1.25 for driving oxen, or $1.50 for "digging a grave," or the same amount "for going after the thief."

House-rent is recorded at the rate of thirty dollars a year.

One may explain the high rates of many of these commodities, and the relatively high rate paid for labor by the prevalence of war prices at the time. Commodities such as molasses would be expensive as a result of the stoppage of sea-trade; and the labor market was exhausted to supply the army with soldiers.

In 1824 Toffey imported, for Costuming, shawls, crepe at $1 per yard, silk, skein-silk, twist, ribbon, velvet at 90c. per yard, drab-cloth, flannel, braid, handkerchiefs, buttons and button-moulds, gloves, suspenders, calico, vest patterns, pins, chrome-yellow, "bearskin" at 82c. per yard, dress handkerchiefs, beads, buckles, silk flags and morocco skins.

Of new foods he imported molasses at 35c. per gallon, oranges at 2c. each, which he seems to have sold only one by one, sugar at 6c., tobacco at 12c., alum, tea at 85c., salt at $1 per bushel, pepper, all-spice, raisins, salt-peter, pearlash, castile soap, hard soap, paregoric, ginger, logwood, vitriol, cinnamon, snuff, sulphur, cloves, mustard, opium, coffee, loaf sugar, watermelons, and seeds for beets, lettuce, parsnips.

Of House-furnishings, he had for sale, knives, forks—one set of knives and forks selling for $13, plates, bowls, pitchers, mugs, teacups, teapots, decanters, almanacs, brooms, oilcloth, glass and putty, inkstands, bedsteads, spoons in sets, sugar-bowls, tin pans.

Of Tools and Materials for Industry he sold nails by the "paper," by the hundred and by the pound, files, oil at 75c. a gallon, locks, slates, paper, pocket-books, pencils, turpentine, raw steel and iron, spectacles at 34c., sandpaper, shovels and spades, screws, gimlets.

Rum, brandy and gin appear also, with powder, shot and fishhooks, as tributes to the convivial and adventurous spirit. But the convivial spirits were the better patrons, for there was scarcely an entry in certain years in which was not an item of alcoholic spirits. The sporting goods were only occasionally purchased.

In 1833 for Costuming, cotton-batting had appeared, and canton flannel, canvas, blue jeans at 83c. per yard, brown Holland, cloth at $3.64 per yard, hats at 44c. each, hooks and eyes, pearl buttons at 10c. a dozen, side combs, bandanna handkerchiefs; while sole-leather was still sold in quantity, with buckskin mittens, which were scarcely made on the Hill.

For Industry, behold the arrival of pincers, gum arabic, "Pittsburgh cord" at 21c. per yard. In Housings, candles, frying pans, tin pails, dippers, tin basins, wash-tubs made their appearance; and in this year for the first time window-blinds were sold, for 75c.

For Food and Medicines John Toffey offered at this time codfish, coffee, souchong tea, crackers, castor oil, camphor gum, Epsom salts.

Meantime, a day's wages had fallen from $1 and $1.50 to 65c. and 75c. per day.

The growth of trade in John Toffey's store is summarized in Table I. In this table may be seen also the growth of economic demand. The increase of the number of kinds of commodities in each evidences the acquirement of varied tastes by this people of the Hill.

The above summary of the importations to the Hill in the years 1814-1833 casts light upon the social and religious history of the period in question; in which occurred the greatest social convulsion this community has ever known. In the year 1828 the Religious Society of the Friends was divided, never to be united, the integrity of the community as a social and religious unit was ended, the ties of a century were severed, and instead of the "unity" of which Quakers are always so conscious, came mutual criticism, recrimination, and excommunication of one-half of the community by the majority of the Meeting. Thus ended the communal life of Quaker Hill, and began the disintegration of the community which is now almost complete.

It is true that this schism was general throughout the denomination, in all the United States; and that it was shared in its doctrinal influences by the Congregational churches, the Unitarian Association having been formed in Boston in 1825. But nevertheless it had roots on Quaker Hill in an economic condition; and that economic condition may have been general throughout the Eastern States.

Let the doctrinal causes of this schism be considered elsewhere.[32] Economic causes are hinted at in the above paragraphs. There came in many embellishments of life which must have seemed to early Friends mere luxuries, and to the stricter few must have appeared instruments of sin, as "beads," "ribbons," velvet, silk, braid, crepe, shawls, dress handkerchiefs, buckles, silk flags, pearl buttons—these are expressions of new states of mind. The economic change underlying the social convulsion is seen in the increase of varied stuffs for costume, articles and materials for the food and medicine cupboards of the farmhouses, and in more varied tools and materials both for industry and house furnishing.

Even more influential than the exciting power of luxuries would be the quieter and more pervasive stimulus of comfort. Houses that are glazed and ceiled and furnished with well adapted implements in every room; tables set with all the wares of leisurely and pleasurable feeding speak a new state of affairs. The people so clothed and so fed begin to produce in every family some members of cultured tastes, some of independent thought, who are restive under the denials of Quakerism.

Business and industry too become more varied; and the effect of this prosperous and varied industry shows itself in active and critical minds. Importation from places beyond Poughkeepsie awakened imagination and invited reflection upon the state of the world.

All this time the daily wage continued to fall, from $1 and $1.50 in 1814 to 50c., 65c. and 75c. in 1833. It is said that men bitterly commented, in those days of the rapid development of the country, that a farmer who paid a laborer fifty cents for a day's labor in the hay-field from daybreak to dark, would pay the same amount, fifty cents, for his supper on the Hudson River boat, when he made his annual visit to the great city of New York.

We have, then, in John Toffey's daybook a reflection of conditions which had to do with the break-up of the community, as truly as did the theological difference between Elias Hicks and the Orthodox. Comfortable living, diversified and intensified industry, importation of expensive and stimulating comforts, leisure with its sources in wealth, and its tendencies toward reflection, and especially a differentiation of the homogeneous community into diverse classes, owing to lowered wages and multiplied embellishments of life, made up altogether the raw materials of discontent, criticism and division.

These factors go with a state of growing discontent and disintegration. The men and women possessed of leisure cultivated a humanist state of mind, with which arose a critical spirit, a nicer taste and a cultured discrimination. They were offended by literalism, bored by crudeness however much in earnest, and disgusted with the illogical assertions of pietists. The imperative mandate of the meeting awakened in them only opposition. They found many to sympathize with their state of mind.

On the other side there were those who seriously feared the incoming of luxurious ways. They distrusted books, remembering the values of one Book to the laborer who reads it alone; they believed in plainness, and their minds associated freedom of dress with freedom of thought. They resented also the new privileges conferred on some by wealth, because to most had come only harder work with discontent.

The schism which rent the community was an economic heresy, the belief in the use of money for embellishment of life. All the Quakers regarded with favor the making of money. The Liberals, however, saw ends beyond money, and processes of ultimate value beyond administration and business. They looked for household comforts, books, travel, and the leisure with great souls who have written and have expressed the greatest truths. They believed in a divinity such as could have made, and regarded with favor, the whole teeming world.

The Orthodox saw the values of prosperity only in plainness of life, recognized no divinity in humanized manners, and sternly but ineffectually called the community back to idealized commonplaceness, and to hear the utterances of rude ploughmen and cobblers in the name of Deity.

One ventures to believe, too, that there was a falling away from all religious exercises at this time, and that the pious of both schools were troubled about it, and accused one another. The poor were too hard worked and too poorly paid to feel anything but discontent; and the leaders of the community differed as to the solution of the religious problem. Hence came division.

The Quakers are conscious of religious "unity," but their mode of life is a true economic unity. The Quaker Community was re-arranging itself economically, but the members felt a religious change. Class division was coming upon them, and they felt it as a sectarian division. It was indeed the end of the old community ruled by religion, and the formation of a new neighborhood life; a new Quakerism, ruled by economic classes: the persons of influence being invariably persons of means, and the dominating leaders rich. Doubtless the Quakers who led in the Division of 1828 hoped, in each party equally, to maintain the old religious domination. The community has never granted that leadership to the divided Meeting, neither to the Orthodox, nor to the Hicksites. The real power has, since a period antedating the division, been in the hands of those who have owned farms centrally located; who in addition to owning land centrally located have been possessed of large means: the "rich men" and "wealthy women" have possessed a monopoly of actual leadership. If also, they have been religiously inclined, their leadership has been absolute.