560. Comparison of conditions in 1789 and in 1914.—The United States was in 1914 recognized as one of the greatest countries of the world in area, in population, in wealth, in efficiency of the organization of production and business, and in the volume of internal trade and foreign commerce. Little more than a century before, when it began its career as an independent state, it was an aspirant struggling merely for a respectable position among the minor powers. Its population, which in 1914 was nearly one hundred million, was in 1790 less than four million, placing it in this respect far below the great states of Europe, and not far above such little states as the Netherlands, Portugal, or Sweden. The whole settled area, comprising a strip along the Atlantic coast, and the mere beginnings of settlement beyond the Appalachian Mountains, was less than the area of the present state of Texas. The people were poor, and backward in industrial development. The amount of internal trade was small, even in proportion to the scanty population. The people were forced into foreign commerce by the necessities of their condition. They were as yet unable to supply the needs of civilization by wares of their own production. They had as yet developed no resources which assured their economic position in commerce with European powers, and in their political and military position they were so weak that they must beg as favors rather than demand as rights the opening of markets which were essential to their commercial growth.

The sharp contrast between 1789 and 1914 indicates clearly the importance of the subject which will be treated in the following chapters of the book, the history of the commerce of the United States. The student is asked to give his attention first to a detailed study of conditions existing about the year 1789. A survey of conditions at that date will furnish a summary of the development of the colonial period, and a basis for appreciating the national progress of more recent times.

561. Chief exports in 1790.—Following the plan pursued in earlier chapters we shall attend first to the exports of the country, composed of those wares which could be produced to such advantage that the people could sell a surplus of them abroad, and so secure the imports of which they stood in need. The following table gives the chief items for the first year of our national existence:

One characteristic of this table is noteworthy because it has marked the exports of the country from this early time to the present. The exports of the United States have always consisted not of a great many articles sold in small quantities, but of a few great staples sold in large quantities. Nine items, it will be observed, comprised over three fourths of the total value, and the two items, breadstuffs and tobacco, made up over half.

562. Predominance of agriculture; experiments with crops.—The table shows clearly that the strength of the United States at this time lay in what the economists call extractive industries, devoted to the production of raw materials. Some of the wares, it is true, had undergone the first stages of manufacture (flour, lumber, potash, indigo), but their chief value consisted still in the original material. In contrast with present conditions it was estimated at this time that nine tenths of the people were engaged in agricultural pursuits, and that even in New England, where industrial pursuits were most diversified, only one eighth were employed in manufactures, trade, or other occupations besides agriculture. Of twenty-one presidents of the United States (to 1880) fifteen were farmers or the sons of farmers.

The agricultural products of the table above represent the results of nearly two centuries of experiment in the search for profitable crops. It is not easy to determine what cultures will pay under the conditions of a new country. Early settlers had extravagant hopes of supplying the European market with silk, wine, olive oil, drugs, dyes, etc., and learned only by bitter experience that the conditions of nature and man destined America to a commercial career different from that of southern Europe or Asia. Most of the important crops and grasses were introduced to this country from other continents, Indian corn being, of course, the notable exception; and so thoroughly had the process of experiment been carried out that in the hundred years following the Revolution only one species of cultivated plant (sorghum) was introduced, of sufficient importance to be enumerated in the census.

563. Breadstuffs.—The crop of greatest importance to the people of the American colonies was, without question, maize or Indian corn. This crop, of native origin, flourished in all parts of the colonies, and yielded, under the conditions of a primitive agriculture, far richer returns than could be secured from any of the European grains. To the domestic food supply it was indispensable. For export purposes, however, it was less desirable, and though moderate quantities were shipped abroad every year, the demand of foreign markets, as appears in the table, was chiefly for wheat and wheat flour. Wheat was at this time a costly luxury in New England, but it could be grown to advantage in the middle colonies and in Virginia; and in the particular period which we are studying it assumed a leading position among the exports. European countries had formerly been unwilling to receive a product which competed with their own agriculture, but the failure of crops in Europe, the outbreak of the French Revolution (1789), and the long wars following, caused a great increase in the demand for our food products, and gave rich returns to the wheat farmers who had been suffering from the lack of a market.

564. Other products of northern agriculture.—Aside from the cereals the agricultural exports of the middle and northern colonies were unimportant. Many attempts had been made to grow flax and hemp, to sell in competition with the produce of Russia and other Baltic countries. The seed of the flax was exported, but the preparation of the fiber was too troublesome to pay the producer, and though coarse fabrics for home wear were made of it and it was used for sewing shoes until the invention of the wooden shoe peg, the export of flax and hemp fiber remained insignificant.

The second place among exports of northern agriculture, after breadstuffs, was taken by stock and meat products. The abundance of pasture land encouraged farmers to raise a surplus of live stock for sale, though as yet they paid but little attention to breeding or to the proper care and fattening of the animals. Horses were shipped to Canada and to the West Indies, while salt beef and salt pork had a ready sale for provisioning ships, and for export to the West Indies. The export of live animals and provisions amounted, however, to less than one million dollars.

565. Southern staples; tobacco.—Many of the export products above mentioned could be raised in the southern colonies, and all of them were, in fact, produced there to some extent. The people of the South, however, were fortunate in finding conditions suited to the production of some special crops, which, unlike those of the North, could not be produced to advantage in Europe, and which therefore were more readily taken in trade. The Southerners followed their interests, therefore, by raising of foodstuffs only what they absolutely needed, and by applying themselves to their special staples. Of these tobacco was by far the most important throughout the colonial period. It was asserted at one time that a man could provide grain for five men and clothes for two, by the sale of the tobacco which he could grow unassisted. Until the rise of the cotton culture tobacco was king among the southern staples, and had no rival export at the North of equal importance; through the eighteenth century it formed about half of the total exports of the colonies to England, and only just before the close of the century did it yield the leading place to wheat. Disadvantages of a one-crop system, entailing sharp fluctuations in price and periods of dearth, the rapid exhaustion of the soil under tobacco, and the encouragement of negro slavery,—all these evils could not turn the planters of Maryland and Virginia from a crop which, on the whole, yielded rich returns.

566. Rice and indigo.—In Carolina rice took the position held by tobacco in other southern colonies. Its cultivation became of practical importance only toward 1700, starting, it is said, from the gift of a small parcel of rough rice by the captain of a ship bound from Madagascar to Liverpool, who was forced to put into Charleston for repairs. The grain found a ready market in southern Europe and in the West Indies, and became soon an important article of export, though the modern method of water culture was not introduced until nearly 1800.

The only other item of southern produce deserving special mention in this place is indigo. This plant, the reader will remember, was the source of a blue dye which at the time was highly prized and which, indeed, has only recently been displaced by anilin colors. Attempts had been made in the early colonial period to raise indigo, but no success attended them until about 1750. After that date the culture flourished in South Carolina and Georgia; aided by a bounty from the British government the planters exported large quantities and secured handsome returns. The preparation of indigo was, however, an unwholesome occupation, as the plant, after being soaked in water, was left to rot, giving out an offensive odor and drawing innumerable flies. It was an indication of progress, therefore, that indigo culture declined rapidly after 1790; planters gladly took up the cotton culture, and the United States soon secured by importation from abroad the ware of which it had formerly produced a surplus.

567. Methods of agriculture.—Though agriculture as a source of wealth overshadowed all other industries in the colonies, it was conducted with methods which we should now consider extremely inefficient and wasteful. Washington wrote to an agricultural specialist in England: “An English farmer must have a very indifferent opinion of our American soil when he hears that an acre of it produces no more than from 8 to 10 bushels of wheat; but he must not forget that in all countries where land is cheap and labor is dear the people prefer cultivating much to cultivating well.”

The plow, the most important implement of agriculture, was still at the time of the Revolution substantially unchanged from the models of ancient times. The mould-board, of wood as the name implies, was sometimes plated with sheet iron or with strips made out of old horseshoes. President Jefferson improved the shape of the mould-board, and about the end of the century the cast-iron plow began to come into common use. The sickle gave place to the scythe and cradle, but threshing was still done with a flail or by driving horses over the grain. There was a marked increase in the interest in agricultural science and methods about the time when the national government began, agricultural societies were founded in many states, and progress thenceforth was more rapid.

568. Forest products; potash.—If the reader, after this review of the agricultural exports of the country at the beginning of its national existence, will refer again to the table above, he will find that export products of considerable importance were derived also from the fisheries and the forests.

The eastern slope of the country was so heavily wooded that trees were regarded rather as a hindrance than a help by the colonists. It was good philosophy, however, to make the best of them; and the British government, during the colonial period, encouraged the export of forest products, to avoid depending on the Baltic countries for the supply of wood and naval stores. The most spectacular export of this description was that of the great masts and spars, which formerly had been reserved for the government by the mark of the broad arrow, and which were hauled out of the woods in winter by fifty yoke or more of oxen. Most of the wood, however, left the country in smaller form: staves and heading, which were sent to the West Indies and there set up into casks and hogsheads for the carriage of sugar products; boards, shingles, etc.

When wood ashes are leached, and the water evaporated, the product is potash; if this be refined by heating it is termed pearlash. It is an impure carbonate of potassium, and at this early stage of chemical industry it had an immense importance in the arts, being used in bleaching, the manufacture of glass, soap, etc. Besides enjoying a ready sale potash had another peculiar advantage in this period; it was, besides the naval stores (pitch, tar, turpentine, rosin), the only wood product which could be readily transported on land. It was, therefore, a great resource when land was cleared; and practically every new settlement, in the northern colonies at least, had its potash works, in which useless wood was converted into a valuable export product.

569. Fisheries.—“The fisheries first and mainly placed New England on its legs.” The people of the northern shore were driven to the sea by the difficulties of life on land; and used the proceeds of the fishing industry as the means of purchasing their imports from abroad, and part even of their food supply from other colonies. They had advantages over European competitors in their nearness to the great fishing grounds and in their skill in building and navigating boats; and though the proportion of the total population engaged in fisheries was never large (about one thousandth at this time), the product was sufficiently important to take a respectable rank among the exports of the country. Every year more than five hundred boats left the towns of the Massachusetts coast, especially Gloucester and Marblehead, for the banks of Newfoundland, while Nantucket and New Bedford became the source of whaling voyages that reached from the Arctic to the Antarctic oceans.

In comparison with the fisheries the fur trade had become of little importance; the European demand for furs was met at this time by territory lying to the north of the limits of the United States.

570. Chief imports, 1791.—The method, or rather the lack of method, followed by the government in keeping its commercial statistics in early days, renders it impossible, unfortunately, to present here a table of imports in 1790 comparable in accuracy and in detail to the table of exports given above. We must content ourselves with the following estimates for the year 1791.

571. Classes of wares imported; manufactures.—The table shows, on its face, only one thing with clearness, that the people used already a considerable part of their surplus to purchase articles of food, of the nature rather of luxuries than of necessaries, which could not be produced to advantage at home. This feature has ever since characterized the import trade of the country. In the recent commerce of the United States we find, beside the class of colonial products, two other classes comprising the bulk of the remaining imports, manufactures and material for manufacturing. Were articles of these two classes masked behind that large item of the table which classifies the imports only with reference to tariff schedules? The answer can be given, without hesitation, in the affirmative. Raw materials for manufacturing were still, however, comparatively unimportant; most of the imports to this country, at the beginning of its national existence, were finished manufactures. The statement made by a writer in 1818 held true at this time: “Our imports consist chiefly of articles which habit and fashion have made necessary for our consumption: but a very small proportion of them is subservient to our arts and manufactures.”

To describe the character of these imported manufactures in detail would be an arduous task, for they included the products of practically all the handicrafts and factories of Europe. In contrast with the exports of the country, which have been restricted always to a few great staples, the imports, from earliest times to the present, have been extraordinarily diversified. The imports included, besides the items specified in the table above, a large part or the whole of the metals used in the country (tin, copper, lead, pewter, brass, and iron), and manufactures of metal. They comprised, further, a great quantity of the various textiles, of woolen, cotton, linen, and silk; and miscellaneous manufactures such as glass and earthen ware, paper, leather wares, etc.

572. Significance of the import of manufactures.—Accepting now as the most important characteristic of the imports of this period the preponderance of manufactured articles, we must seek to realize why this was so, and what it signified. Anticipating the substance of following sections it may be said, in summary, that the people of the United States supplied their need for manufactured articles by their own handiwork, so far as possible, but that they found it unprofitable to attempt to make wares the manufacture of which required high technical skill, the use of machinery, and an advanced organization of business. They depended on Europe, therefore, for all the finer manufactures. The total amount of manufactures imported annually was not large in proportion to the population, being less than $5 per head; yet this amount comprised most of the comforts and luxuries as well as many of the necessaries, which the people enjoyed. Even at the end of the colonial period the average American led a life of struggling and privation, and could think himself fortunate if he won by his toil on land or at sea a surplus sufficient to provide him with a few articles beyond the bounds of his absolute necessities.

573. Household self-sufficiency.—In contrast with the modern scale of living the simplicity of the standard of life at this period can scarcely be exaggerated. Most of the articles consumed in a family were produced at home. The house was begun with the help of neighbors, and was finished, perhaps long afterwards, by the inmates themselves. Domestic utensils, household furniture, and farm implements were still made, to a large extent, on the farm where they were used. The every-day clothing of the people, made from linen or wool or from a combination of the two (“linsy-woolsey”), was spun and woven, cut out and made into clothes, with comparatively little professional help. Carpets were made from woolen yarn spun in the family, sent away only to be dyed, and then woven either at home or in the neighborhood. The self-sufficiency of the family group was not so complete in 1800 as it had been in 1700, but it continued still to be the dominant feature in economic life, and in some districts lasted for decades to come.

574. Town self-sufficiency.—Articles which were not made in the household were, as a rule, made in the town, and did not contribute to the volume of distant trade or of foreign commerce. The important unit in the economic organization of the United States at this period was the rural group of perhaps a few hundred inhabitants. Most of the people were farmers, as has been said above, and very few were entirely independent of farming. Some, however, had the skill and implements which enabled them to supply the needs which could hardly be met by household production. Nearly every village had a gristmill, and, if conditions favored, a sawmill. The village blacksmith was to be found in almost every settlement, and performed an astonishing variety of work for the people. Toward 1800, moreover, a tannery had become a common though not a universal feature of village life, and most towns could now boast of a shoemaker. Some still depended, however, on the itinerant cobbler, and few were large enough at this time to furnish paying custom to special artisans; and relied on traveling tinkers, glaziers, coopers, curriers, etc., to perform the services proper to their trades.

575. Development of household manufactures.—Only in a few lines of manufacture had the organization developed beyond the simple lines sketched above. The making of cloth is an operation requiring much time, considerable technical skill, and, for some processes, machinery such as few households would possess. By 1700 it had become customary to rely upon professionals for fulling, the process which compacts the fibers of the cloth, and fulling mills were widely distributed in 1800. Carding machines, for straightening the fibers of wool before spinning, were to be found in many towns, and it was more and more common, also, to have the weaving done out of the house, though this process was ordinarily attended to in the immediate neighborhood. With outside aid of this character the people of some parts of the country were able to produce cloth in excess of their needs, and could use the surplus in trade.

Nearly every town, moreover, in the northern and central colonies, had some industry which utilized the spare time of the inhabitants, and gave them the means of exchange with people in the colonies or abroad. For a characteristic description take the following of Raynham, Mass., 1793, when the town had a population of about 1,000: “Besides the usual business of husbandry, numbers are here employed in the manufactories of bar iron, hollow ware, nails, irons for vessels, iron shovels, potash, shingles, &c.”

576. Appreciation and criticism of American manufactures at this time.—It would be tedious and unprofitable to study in detail the petty manufactures which cropped up in the various towns of this period. Let us accept as a summary the following statement, applying to the decade ending in 1800: “The domestic manufactures best established are those of leather, iron, flax, potters’ wares, including bricks, ardent spirits, malt liquors, cider, paper of all kinds, hats, stuff and silk shoes, refined sugars, spermaceti and tallow candles, copper, brass and tin wares, carriages, cabinet wares, snuff, gunpowder and salt.”

In studying this description the reader should bear certain facts in mind. First, the list, however long it seems, is far from including all the wares required for the satisfaction of ordinary wants. Second, though these manufactures are stated to be the ones best established, there was, among them all only one sufficiently strong to produce a considerable surplus for sale outside the country; this was the rum manufacture. The people still relied largely on importations from foreign countries for many of the wares enumerated. Third, many of these manufactures (bricks, cider, snuff, and salt, for example; flour and sawmill products might properly be included) were of a very simple character, requiring no great technical skill or elaborate machinery. Water power was used widely, but steam power had not yet been applied, and improved machinery had not yet been introduced from Europe. The factory system, with its extensive use of machinery and its strict organization of labor, was first permanently established in the United States in 1790, at Pawtucket, R. I.; and the American factories did not, for many years, reach the English standard of efficiency. An English committee reported in 1791 that the American cotton manufactures were of a coarse grade, of worse quality and of higher price than those produced at Manchester.

QUESTIONS AND TOPICS

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Early American Commerce