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Mutual Wealth In Rural America, E. G. Nadeau, Elisabeth Howard

Center for Social Development Research

This essay contends that mutual wealth in rural America, particularly related to the use of land and other natural resources, has undergone three major paradigm shifts in the last 500 years, and may be at the threshold of a fourth. First, from the early 1500s to about 1800, European diseases and conquest destroyed the elaborate management systems for agriculture, forests, game, and other natural resources developed by North American Indians. Second, from the early 1500s to the early 1900s, European and white American settlers, induced by offers of land, repopulated the continent primarily with small and medium-sized farms and ranches. …