From the sales of their crops and stock and from their mercantile ventures they got enough to pay the blacksmith and carpenter, who did odd jobs for them, and the Eastern merchants from whom they got gloves, bonnets, hats, and shoes, and the cloth which was made into dresses by the womankind on their plantations.

But most of their wants were supplied on their own places.

Their abundant tables were furnished mainly with, what their own farms yielded.

When they travelled they went in their own carriages.

The rich men, whose wants were comparatively many, usually had on their estates white hired men or black slaves whose labor could gratify them; while the ordinary farmer, of the class that formed the great majority of the population, was capable of supplying almost all his needs himself, or with the assistance of his family.
Contrast of Old and new Methods of Settlements.
The immense preponderance of the agricultural, land-holding, and land-tilling element, and the comparative utter insignificance of town development was highly characteristic of the Western settlement of this time, and offers a very marked contrast to what goes on to-day, in the settlement of new countries.