1NDLISTT?IAL HfSTUKl Cur[iell Universilv Libr, HC 103. M7 Anindustnalhistory of the American pe r\0! P 11 I I II III I U^F J_jJL* 11 111 111 li fp iqo4 002 600 405 tL. THE LIBRARY OF THE NEW YORK STATE SCHOOL OF INDUSTRIAL AND LABOR RELATIONS AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY HC loa.M?"""'""'"""''-"'"^ An Industrial history of the American pe 3 1924 002 600 405 The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002600405 AN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE •Tl ^]§?>^° THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW VORK ■ BOSTON • CHICAGO DALLAS • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lra TORONTO AN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE BY J. R. H. MOORE HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY MANUAL TRAINING HIGH SCHOOL INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA PROPERTY OF HSRARY NEW YnnK STATE mmi INOUSTf^lAL A?;0 LAOOR RELATIONS CORNELL UNIVERSITY Weto gork THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1927 Aii rights reserved Copyright, 1913, By the MACMILLAN COMPANY. Kiet up and electrotyped. Published February, 1913 Korfaiaati ipress J. S. GuBhing Go. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. PREFACE The vmderlying thought of this book is borrowed from one of the greatest thinkers of modern times, who, among many wise sayings, once wrote this piece of advice — " Read not to contra- dict and confute, nor to believe and take for granted, nor to find talk and discourse, but to weigh and consider." This gives us in a nutshell the task of high school education, to teach our boys and girls in such a manner that they may in time be- come thoughtful students of men and events. The author has often been struck by certain shortcomings in our standard high school courses in history. For the prospective college student, especially if he is pursuing the ancient languages, the study of ancient history for one year in the early part of the course may be profitable, but for the great majority of students who do not attend college and whose circumstances drive them early from school into wage-earning occupations, the study of some other form of history would be far more profitable. More valuable to such students than familiarity with Greek and Roman history is a knowledge of the industrial history of their own country, an account of the development and influence of a few tj^ical industries, among which the student must per- chance choose one as a means of livelihood and in which he will in any case have direct interest as a citizen and a worker in the industrial field. Why do we teach American history in the high schools? The time and expense of four years spent in these schools are justified if, at the end of the period, the student is well advanced vi PREFACE on the road toward useful citizenship. He should be able to observe, to think, and to work, and he should, among other things, have a sufficiently good understanding of present-day events to play a respectable part in public as well as in private life. To obtain this sober but not in the least showy training is far more difficult than to perform mental gymnastics that are often little more than feats of memory. The importance of history as one means of securing the desired training is being recognized more and more. This Industrial History of the American People presupposes the ordinary grammar school course in United States history. Such a preliminary course is almost always political in its nature, and leaves the child with a great deal that he has "learned," but has had no chance to make thoroughly his own by further use. The grammar school course is the foundation on which the high school student builds, and experience has shown that any class of twenty-five children can supply the needed facts in political history. The plan of the book includes thirteen chapters. The first chapter is introductory to the others, each of which takes up a topic and develops it from the beginning of oiu: history to the present time. In certain cases, on ac- count of the extent of the subject, the material is divided at some convenient point, so that there are but nine chief topics treated. The chapters increase in length as the work proceeds, and the method of treatment becomes somewhat more difficult. Thorough work with the first five chapters will prepare the class for the remaining eight. An important adjunct to this book is the "Teacher's Manual " accompanying it. This contains supplementary matter, sug- gestions as to methods for the use of notebooks, readings in fiction and books of reference, suggestions for school libraries, supplementary questions, suggestions for discussions and PREFACE vii debates, in short, all the "fine print" that is so necessary, yet is of such a nature that one does not like to put it into a text- book, lest it discourage the child beyond recovery. The Manual is suitable for use by any one, i.e. it need not be locked up in the teacher's desk, but may be freely used by teacher and student. The author realizes that in blazing a new trail he has doubt- less offended the taste of many careful students. His only apology is the simple statement that this textbook was written for high school students, and from their standpoint. In choice of material, in style, in diction, in sentence and paragraph structure, the sole criterion has been the answer to this question — What material can the class best handle, and in what form can it best be put before them? Thanks are due to many whose advice has been gratefully accepted. Valuable help has come from many professional friends, especially from my sister, Anna Lewis Moore of the Framingham (Mass.) State Normal School, and from W. B. Davison and E. H. K. McComb of the Indianapolis Public School System. Messrs. D. Appleton & Company, Dodd, Mead & Company, The Burrows Brothers Company, and W. K. Bixby, Esq., of St. Louis, have permitted the use of quotations from copyrighted source material. The Librarian of Harvard College has kindly allowed the reproduction of many rare prints. Especially do I wish to thank Professor Edward Channing of Harvard College for the inspiration of his teaching. J. R. H. MOORE. Indianapolis, Indiana. January, 1913. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. Introduction . . i II. The Fisheries 14 III. Lumber 33 IV. The Fur Trade 61 V. The Domestic Problem 107 VI. Agriculture -131 VII. Commerce and Money Matters in Colonial Days . 163 VIII. Colonial Government 209 IX. The City Problem in the United States . . 256 X. Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century . . 299 XI. The Money Question 349 XII. Manufacturing in the Nineteenth Century . . 392 XIII. Transportation in the Nineteenth Century . . 439 LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE Mercator Projection of the World ( Color) . . . Between 4 and 5 A Fourteenth-century World Map 7 The Fleet of Columbus 9 The Mayflower 10 A Nineteenth-century Whaling Bark n Unloading Cod at Gloucester, Massachusetts 17 Colonial Taxation Eighty Years before the Revolution .... 25 A Group of Seventeenth-century Ships 36 Why " Busy Work " accomplished so Much 40 Logging Waste in the Pine Forests of Michigan 47 The Result of Cutting off the Forests ....... 55 Gullied Field showing Destruction of Level Land by Erosion . . 57 A Typical Water Power . 58 The Title-pages of Two Books by " John Josselyn, Gent." ... 63 A Map of North America made about 1690 88 A Map of North America made about 1 798 89 The Interior of Old Fort Griswold 95 North America {Color) Facing 96 The Biter Bit 98 A Typical Rookery on the Pribilof Islands Early in the Breeding Season 104 Part of an Indenture no A " Mild Punishment " in An Eighteenth-century Advertisement 114 An Eighteenth-century Flintlock 1:6 A South Carolina Rice Swamp . .120 The Famous Captain John Smith and his Equally Famous Map . . 137 A New England Hillside 140 A Washington Hillside 141 Revolutionary Monuments show Workers 143 Part of the Navigation Act . 147 The Line of the Minute Men, April 19, 1775 150 The Opinion of a Great Englishman on Locke's Essays on Government 153 Whitney's Cotton Gin . 1^7 xi xii LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS FAGS Picking Cotton " . • IS9 Tlie Puritan Sabbath l6i James I 169 A Champion of the Rights of Englishmen ...... 177 A Scene in the Land of Cotton 180 " Old Massachusetts " 189 Specimen of Colonial Paper Currency .195 A Page of the Stamp Act 20i A " Stamp Act " Stamp . 202 A Broad-minded Englishman 206 Specimen of Continental Paper Currency 207 Part of the Domesday Book 210 A Reproduction of the Original Copy of the Pilgrim Compact . .217 Part of a Page of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties .... 221 Part of the Charter of Pennsylvania 237 One of the Natural Products of the Colonies 248 A Sample of Destructive Lumbering 270 Raw Material of which we must make Citizens ..... 273 Mott Street Barracks 283 Locks of Erie Canal at Lockport ........ 309 Cotton Production with Small Capital 316 Modern Methods in the Corn Belt 317 Geographical Distribution of Cane and Beet Sugar .... 331 Cutting Sugar Cane 332 A Tobacco Field , 335 Hon. William Smith, Historian of Canada 345 Pine Tree Shilling , , 350 The Depreciation of Continental Currency 351 The Ancestor of our Quarter , 353 Early Lack of Confidence in American Money ..... 355 The Value of Caution . 386 The Old Mill at New London, Connecticut 393 A Stream with a History 395 Spinning Room in Slater's Mill 398 An Iron Furnace of Revolutionary Days 401 Modern Magazine Rifle . 410 Traveling by Packet Boat, Erie Canal 417 The World's Greatest Manufacturing Areas ...... 429 On the Main Route from Boston to Albany ...... 442 An Old Stagecoach 444 Indian Queen Tavern, Bladensburg, Maryland 445 LIST OF MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS XUl PAGE S.S. Franconia .......•••. 446 A Relic of Stagecoach Days 45 1 An Early Locomotive 457 The Old-fashioned Strap-iron Rail 459 Railway Train in an Early Day 460 The Empire State Express 461 Nast's Famous Tweed Ring Cartoon ....... 472 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN PEOPLE CHAPTER I Introduction In order to understand the reasons for the discovery of the New World, we must turn back in European history to a won- derful time called the Renaissance, at the end of the Middle Ages. During this period, from the fourteenth century on, through at least two centuries, the minds of men awoke from the slumber of the Dark Ages, and within a very few generations civilization made greater advances in many directions than the previous thousand years had seen. These advances occurred in education, in painting, sculpture, architecture, religion, and in all things that pertain to "learning," but the most important advance came in a changed attitude towards life. Men wanted to know more of the earth itself, and to enjoy it more. Ig- norance, energy, and curiosity united to produce the most as- tonishing results ; for example, it was man's very ignorance of real conditions that gave him the courage to make long voy- ages on unknown waters. Dissatisfaction with the old order of affairs was in the air, and it needed only a little thing to attract the attention of the awakening world. During the later centuries of the Dark Ages there came out of the little known region of central Asia, interference a wandering people, a race of soldiers living by J^* plunder and knowing nothing of the civilization of Europe. In the course of their invasion of western Asia and B I 2 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY eastern Europe, they blocked up the trade routes across Asia by which the people of Europe had for ages been accustomed to bring in eastern goods. SUk, tea, spices, gold, and jewels had filtered very slowly into Europe, requiring much time for trans- portation and increasing rapidly in cost. The traflftc in luxuries had brought great wealth to certain cities of southern Europe, and it was to be expected that these cities would become less wealthy and powerful as their trade lessened. It was also to be expected that they would try by every means to renew their trade. In the centuries before the Renaissance they would probably have submitted to such a disaster without much pro- test, but the new spirit of enterprise, working in many places and among many men, produced a widespread desire to find another trade route to the East. Marco Polo, ^^ might be supposed that little was really known Sir John of the far-off eastern lands from which Europe Mandeville, . and the m the fifteenth century found itself cut off, but ^*^'' the people of that day had two good sources of information about the golden East, the published travels of Marco Polo and of Sir John Mandeville. In the thir- teenth century a Venetian of noble family had made a long journey eastward, under romantic circumstances, and, after an absence of many years, had returned with so remarkable a story that when he put it in writing, it speedily became the greatest book of its age. This was nearly two centuries before printing was invented in Europe, yet so popular did this book become that, even at a time when only a rich man could own a good-sized volume, a great many copies were made. The Travels of Marco Polo, the first great modern story of adven- ture, marked the beginning of modern times. The book had the field to itself for a very long time, and it is easy to imagine the appeal it made to the minds of those who read it or heard it INTRODUCTION 3 read. Marco Polo had a knack of combining what he had seen with what he had heard, so that many of his romances are very- readable. For example: "Zipanguis an island in the eastern ocean, situated at a distance of about 1500 miles from the main- land or coast of Manji. It is of considerable size : its inhabitants have fair complexions, are well made, and are civilized in their manners. Their religion is the worship of idols. They are independent of every foreign power, and governed only by their own kings. They have gold in the greatest abundance, its sources being inexhaustible, but as the king does not allow of its being exported, few merchants visit the country nor is it fre- quented by much shipping from other parts. To this circum- stance we are to attribute the extraordinary richness of the sov- ereign's palace. The entire roof is covered with a plating of gold, in the same manner as we cover houses, or more properly churches, with lead." In a description of the island of Madagas- car he wrote : " The people of the island report that at a cer- tain season of the year an extraordinary kind of bird, which they call a rukh, makes its appearance from the southern re- gion. In form it is said to resemble the eagle, but it is incom- parably greater in size, being so large and strong as to seize an elephant with its talons and to lift it into the air. . . . They brought with them (as I have heard) a feather of the rukh, positively aflSrmed to have measured 90 spans, and the quill part to have been two palms in circumference." A second book of adventure, very popular in western Europe, was known as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. This was a compilation by an unknown author who seems never to have traveled, but whose imagination helped him to heights of fancy of which Marco Polo never dreamed. His stories of eastern marvels are indeed remarkable ; monsters and millionaires vie with one another on his pages in inciting the unwary to adven- 4 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY ture, as, for example : "... men pass by a kingdom that men clepe Caldhile, that is a full ffaire country. And there groweth a manner of fruit as though it were gourds. And when they be ripe, men cut them a-two, and men find within a little beast, in flesh, in bone and blood, as though it were a little lamb without wool. And men eat both the fruit and the beast. And that is a great marvel. Of that fruit have I eaten, although it were wonderful, but that I know well that God is marvellous in his works. And, natheless, I told them of as great a, marvel to them, that is amongst us, and that was of the Bernakes. For I told them that in our country were trees that bear a fruit that become birds flying, and those that fell in the water live, and they that fall on the earth die anon, and they be right good to men's meat. And hereof had they as great marvel, that some of them trowed it were an impossible thing to be." And in another place: "And at the foot of that mount there is a fair well and a great, that hath odour and savour of all spices. And at every hour of the day he changeth his odour and his sa- vour diversely. And whoso drinketh three times fasting of the water of that well he is whole of all manner sickness that he hath. And they that dwell there and drink often of that well they never have sickness ; and they seem always young. I have drunken thereof three or four sithes, and yet, methinketh, I fare the better. Some men clepe it the well of youth. For they that often drink thereof seem always young-like, and live without sickness. And men say, that that well cometh out of Paradise, and therefore is it so virtuous." These and many other pas- sages show us that far-distant lands were present in the imagina- tions of all men, and doubtless these lands were a temptation to many. t One of the chief activities of men during the Middle Ag,eg: was warfare, and whenever there was a lull in European w^Js,- mXRODtJCTION 5 /arge numbers of soldiers were suddenly thrown on their own resources. Legal rights were less defined Religious than they are now, and the system of hiring Unrest in soldiers and paying them with the privilege of plunder did not produce honest and steady citizens. So it hap- pened that there were many men of adventurous disposition and of reckless temper who welcomed a chance to visit the wonderful lands of which Marco Polo and Sir John MandevQle wrote, and to plunder the untold wealth of the strange mon- archs of the East. The governments of Europe, moreover, were glad to be rid of men of this stamp, although they were also glad to claim the somewhat doubtful credit that might come from the exploits of these undesirable citizens of preda- tory instincts. Consequently there was always an abxmdance of human material for any number of expeditions, in spite of the probability that the majority of those who started out would never return. Another force that was largely responsible for the develop- ment of the New World was the religious intolerance of the day. It must be remembered that the last four centuries have seen remarkable advance in the liberality with which men judge each other in respect to their individual opinions. In the fifteenth century toleration was not considered practical, and rulers advocated uniformity of belief as the only safe policy in dealing with the nation's religious Hfe. This identity of reU- gious.and political allegiance was so generally admitted that every government thought itself justified in compelUng uniform- ity of creed, and any one who refused to agree to religious doc- trines as stated by his government was looked upon as a traitor. Hence religious persecutions occurred in all European countries, and many people preferred to leave home and property rathef than suffer the penalties of their so-called crime. 6 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Hard Times The Continent of Europe has, until recent time, in Europe, been almost continuously the battle ground of the nations. During the centuries that preceded the Renaissance warfare had been man's chief activity. The result was naturally disastrous to the fertility of the soil. The brief periods of peace that should have served to refresh the minds and bodies of men and to direct their thoughts and energies to more profitable enterprises were usually made hideous by a hopeless struggle against famine and plague. Europe was hiingry, not with the hunger of a man who occasionally misses a meal, but with the desperate craving of those who never have enough. Vast tracts of land had gone out of cultivation. Thousands of people crowded into the cities, where they suffered from pesti- lence in the summer and were confronted with starvation in the winter. Wood for heating and cooking purposes had become almost a luxury. Hunger and cold combined to stimulate men to exertion. The philosophers of the fifteenth century might not have stated it so, but it is plain to us that the instinct of self-preservation was not the least element in the movement that led Europe to seek new lands. Even with this strong stimulus great difficulties of Fifteenth- stood in the way of the early voyagers, and of century these perhaps the greatest was the lack of a Navigation. serviceable map. There were plenty of maps in existence. There were, for instance, the beautifully colored maps, "Mappjemundi," the work of the scribes who made and illustrated the medieval books. These maps showed the world as flat and somewhat oval in outline; land surfaces covered nearly, all the area, while there was a narrow border of water around the edge. As a rule, the East was at the top of the map, indicated by a picture of the Garden of Eden, and Jerusa- lem, represented by a picture of Solomon's temple, was at the INTRODUCTION A Fourteenth-century World Map. The top shows the East, as usual, but the pictures have largely given way to names. Hold- ing the map so that the East is at the right, one can see the two httle "Pillars of Hercules," and a lew places can easily be identified. The Nile, however, flows into the Red Sea. 8 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY center. The men who made such maps did not Uke to leave any vacant spaces, and their imaginations aided them in filling up all the gaps with monsters borrowed from pagan and sacred story. Hence, without being able to read, a man might read- ily see what was Ukely to happen to one bold enough to venture to the edge of the earth. But in the fifteenth century the work of a Portuguese prince, Henry the Navigator, did much to discredit the older maps, and very soon afterward men began to try to draw rational maps. In the very year of the first voyage of Columbus, a German, Martin Behaim by name, made a 20-inch globe, and even before this, within the years of preparation for the Columbian voyages, Toscanelli, an Itahan philosopher, had drawn a map of the world according to ad- vanced ideas. About the middle of the sixteenth century another famous German, Gerhard Kremer (or Mercator), achieved great fame for himself by his theories of map drawing. However, it was not until the nineteenth century was half gone that any strictly accurate maps were made. So the voyager of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had to make his way without any adequate chart, and with a very faulty notion of the workings of the compass. Another difiSculty in the way of the first voyagers to the New World lay in their want of suitable ships. Hitherto men had made but short voyages. The ships were small ; rigging and hull- alike had been planned for the narrow seas, and for a long time men did not realize that such ships were not suitable for the long voyages and different conditions of over-sea travel. There were large ships in existence, but it was hardly to be expected that any shipowner would risk his best property on so uncertain a paroject as a voyage of discovery. The name of the Mayflower, one of l^ese "large" vessels, is familiar to us, and from its di- mensions we may be able to form an estimate of the adequacy INTRODUCTION 9 of Columbus's fleet, the largest vessel of which was about half as large as the Mayflower. The ship in which the Pilgrims crossed the ocean in the spring of the year 1620 was of one hun- dred and eighty tons burden. She was about ninety feet long, twenty feet in the beam, drawing perhaps fourteen feet of The Fleet of Columbus. water. In this small space one hundred and thirty people were expected to live during a long voyage, with all their goods and provisions. The ship in which Sir Humphrey GUbert made his unfortunate journey to Newfoundland was of only ten tons burden. The largest ship in the fleet with which Ra- leigh started around the world was of only fifty tons burden. The hull of these ships was shaped much like a log, and the prow and stern were blunt. As Mr. Dietrich Knickerbocker said of the Goede Vrouw, they "made as much lee-way as headway, could get along very nearly as fast with the wind ahead as when lO INDUSTRIAL HISTORY it was a-poop," and were "particularly great in a calm." The methods of carrying on naval warfare at that time made it necessary to build the prow and stern high, so that soldiers might be able to shoot down or to jump down when boarding the enemy's shij)s. These castles, as they were called, had two great disadvantages: first, they were likely to catch the wind, and a sudden sc^uall might overturn the ship ; second, in order to balance the weight of the upper works, and to give the vessel the required buoyancy, it was necessary to build the hull very stout and heavy. It was customary, therefore, to con- struct the hull in very sturdy style, and to build the upper works just strong enough to hold together. This gave height without overbalancing weight. But unfortunately it added greatly to the hardships of the sailors and passengers who, because the hull was so occupied with the heavy cargo, were obliged to live in the upper works. These were so lightly built that often the seams opened during a storm. In the account that Governor Bradford wrote of the voyage of the Mayflower he says: "After they had injoyed faire winds and weather INTRODUCTION II for a season, they were incountred many times with cross winds, and mette with many feirce stormes, with which ye shipe was A NlNETEENTH-CENTintY WHALING BaRE. Compare the MayJioU'er of the seventeenth century and the whaler of the nineteenth- Both are similarly rigged, i.e. two masts square rigged, the mizzen schooner rigged in the case of the whaler, lateen rigged in the Maytlcu'cr. Notice the great differences in the hull. shroudly shaken, and her upper works made very leakie;" after the storm, "as for ye decks & uper workes they would 12 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY calke them as well as they could, and though with ye workeing of ye ship they could not long keepe stanch, yet ther would otherwise be no great danger, if they did not overpress her with sails." But even worse than the wet, cold, and crowding was the question of food and drink. With a small hull and a rela- tively large crew the space devoted to provisions must be as small as possible, and when we consider the length of the most famous voyages, it is little wonder that so large a proportion of the crew died on the way. Of the sixty men who started around the world with Magellan only eighteen came back to Spain, and of this number "the majority were sick." Bread, salt meat, and beer formed the staples of diet. Water was provided for cooking purposes, but was to be used for drinking only as a last resort, when the beer gave out. The food was not of the best quality at the start, and with the foul condition of the hold, one may imagine its condition after a long voyage. Shakespeare compared the mind of a clown to "a remainder bis- cuit after a long voyage." A much-dreaded disease called scurvy resulted from the use of too much salt food, and we find that overindulgence in fruits and other products of strange coun- tries was a common cause of death among the early voyagers. Many of the recorded voyages lasted three years or more, anjd during this period the ship had to be cleaned, inside and out, many times, and a new lot of provisions secured. Hard was the lot of the seamen when fresh supplies of food could not be found', or when no suitable place could be found in which to "careen" the ship. It was after such a time that one of the old buc- caneers wrote: "On Sunday, June 12th, the work of careen- ing our ship going on in due order, we came to cleanse our hold, and here in a sudden, both myself and several others were struck totally blind with the filth and nastiness of the said place." INTRODUCTION 1 3 Of another time the same old buccaneer wrote : " In the afternoon of this day died one of our men, whose name was WilUam Cam- mock. His disease was occasioned by a surfeit gained by too much drinking on shore at La Serena ; which produced in him a calenture, or malignant fever and a hiccough. Thus in the evening we buried him in the sea, according to the usual custom of mariners, giving him three French volhes for his funeral." When we consider the difificidties under which Summary, voyages were made in the fifteenth century, the lack of geo- graphical knowledge and of nautical equipment, the discomforts occasioned by the long voyages, the small ships, the bad food, and the unsanitary conditions, we marvel that so many men were willing to risk their lives in the exploration of the unknown West. But we must consider these early explorers as fired with the reckless courage that always characterizes pioneers, and we must take into consideration the various forces so active in the fifteenth century in leading men abroad. The Turkish inter- ference with trade routes to the East gave a commercial mo- tive ; hard times and religious persecution at home gave a social and industrial motive; and the alluring writings of imagina- tive travelers gave a romantic color to the project that fully counterbalanced any anticipation of evil that might have been present in the minds of the explorers. CHAPTER II The Fisheries We know that during the Middle Ages the peo- ages to the pie of western Europe were in a chronic state of ^* hunger; their food was largely vegetable with very little animal food. Apparently the use of fish was not general, but was growing in favor in the cities and near the sea as a cheap, abundant, and wholesome food. For some reason that we do not know, early in the fifteenth century the fishermen of western Europe began to push out westward to find fish. They had gone to Iceland at least as early as 1300, and a more southerly voyage may well have been the result of a storm. It is possible that the demand for fish became so great as to warrant the long voyage, but it is more probable that for some reason little understood the food fish left the western coast of Europe. Such migrations have been noticed in recent years. So the European fishermen, English, French, and perhaps others, pushed across the ocean until they came to a region in the apparently boundless waters where they found plenty of fish. We call these regions "the banks." They are shallow places in the ocean, submarine table-lands, where the sea floor rises to within four hundred feet of the surface, and where grow certain sea plants that are the favorite food of larger forms of sea life. These furnish food for the large and small fishes ; some- times both animab and plants are eaten by the food fish. On these banks, then, the fifteenth-century fishermen could fill the holds of their ships with the food so much needed in Europe. 14 THE FISHERIES 15 With a full cargo the fishing boats would immedi- ately return to Europe, not only because the cargo wen^ no^^ was perishable, but because the westward voyage was '*^*^®'' made agamst the prevailing winds and currents. They certainly would go no farther west than necessary. Every sailor knew what would happen if he went too far to the West. It was reported that the waters of the ocean grew thick and slimy, that horrible monsters lived thereon, and that ships and sailors going into such regions would meet a terrible fate. In- deed, they had only to look at the older maps to see pictures of the very monsters that would appear in the outer regions of the world. Here are three very good reasons, then, why for prob- ably half a century the fishermen of the banks made no en- deavor to find out what lay to the west of their fishing grounds. Another odd thing must be accounted for; that kittle known is, why for so long a time Httle seems to have been of Early known of the far westward voyages of the fishermen. Perhaps they themselves did not know that they had done anything remarkable, and, being for the most part uneducated men, they may have had neither desire nor means to obtain glory from their voyages. Another explanation may be found in the loose method of collecting import taxes or port dues dur- ing the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and even later. The unlucky mariner was practically at the mercy of the official collector, who might tax him repeatedly without fear of being punished for dishonesty. Food, since it was always and every- where in demand, was an easy thing to smuggle, and ia days when unjust and dishonestly administered laws made a smuggler of almost every man, self-interest would cause the coast people to keep very quiet about any cargoes of food that might be landed and sold without paying the king's dues. A further inducement to captains and crews to hold their tongues may l6 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY have been a selfish desire to keep to themselves the knowledge of the source of their wealth. In these early days of the fishing industry, when needed all the boats in the trade had to make a voyage of near the ^t least two thousand miles, one of the greatest ob- Banks. stacles to success was the fact that fish do not keep long, and so must be "cured" in preparation for the market. Heretofore when the fish had been caught within a few days' distance from the market, a simple process had been enough to preserve them, but with a voyage of at least a month from the banks to Europe a careful cleaning and salting was necessary. If the weather was bad and the voyage prolonged, even then the fish might not keep. Therefore it may be said that within a century after Europeans began to fish in American waters, they saw the need of a better curing process before transporta- tion. And then was introduced a problem that has made a great deal of trouble from 1620 down to the present day, — the relation of the fishermen to the land nearest the fishing grounds. In the days when most men did not look upon smuggling as unlawful, it may have been possible to dispose of large quantities of fish secretly, but in course of time, as the knowledge of the fisheries increased and the number of vessels engaging in this enterprise became greater, it must have been recognized as a fact that fish was to become one of the mainstays of the Euro- pean food supply. Then it became no longer necessary or possi- ble to hide the facts concerning the wealth to be drawn from the gray sea. We do not know positively what reasons actuated How the EngUsh the voyage of John Cabot, who sailed from England taterested ™ ^^97 and discovered the northeastern shores of in the North America, but by the year 1500 the fisheries must have become so important as to attract much THE FISHERIES 17 attention. A sixteenth-century writer who had known Sebas- tian Cabot, and possibly the elder Cabot also, wrote : "Sebastian Cabot him selfe, named those landes Baccallaos, bycause that in the seas therabout he founde so great multitudes of certayne bigge fysshes much lyke unto tunies (which the inhabitants Unloading Cod at Gloucester, jMassachusetts. IT of the type of the U^e'rc Here; a man in the hold is pitching the salt cod up to the another man pitches them to a little scaffolding, from which they are tossed up to A schooner ,.. ...^ ... j.^ ... ...^ .. . .. ..... deck, another man pitches them to a little scaffolding, ....... ,. ,,.^., .,,^_. the wharf into the great pan of the scales. An ordinary hay fork is used. caule Baccallaos) that they sumtymes stayed his shyppes"! It is certain that though the banks supplied fish liberally, English fishermen were at this disadvantage, that they must carry a perishable freight for an uncertain length of time, and then compete with men at work in European waters who could sell their product "green," that is, without curing. As shown be- c 1 8 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY fore, to cure the fish thoroughly for the European market, dry land was needed as near the fishing grounds as possible. The process of curing was simple enough ; the fish were cleaned when caught, rubbed with salt, and stacked in the holds of the fishing vessels, just as is done now. They were then taken to the dry- ing grounds, where they were spread on rough benches called flakes. Here the siui and the wind dried out the moisture, and the salt "struck in." The result was a product that could be transported safely and that would keep many months. The Value ^^ ^^ ^^^^ ^° ^^^ ^^^^ ^^^ nation that possessed of the Dry- land Suitable for drying the fish would have a great advantage over others. It would not only have a better food supply for its own pople, but it would have also a decided commercial advantage. It would control a surplus and might sell to its neighbors or withhold from them, as it pleased. But the drying grounds were far from Europe, and law was not enforced so far from home. National and commercial jealousy urged men on to raid each other's property ; hence actual Ownership of the land and protection of the property must be attained in order to secure any real leadership in the industry. Here we have, briefly, the early history of the deep-sea fisheries, as an international bone of contention. The time when men first realized the importance European Nations and of land ownership may be placed at about the year ^® . 1600. The year 1500 saw the deep-sea fisheries in full operation. Ships from England, France, Spain, and Portugal were on the banks, besides a few from other less powerful countries. During the sixteenth century the condition of the industry varied with the state of affairs in Europe, being sometimes very prosperous, and, at times when war was general on land or sea, very poor. For example, in 1550, just as the great wars of Charles V were closing, and when the demand for THE FISHERIES 19 food was naturally very great, the Portuguese alone had at least four hundred fishing vessels on the banks. But home rivalries were unfortunately carried across the seas, and the fishermen often captured the ships of hostile nations. Such a disaster over- took the Spanish fleet soon after 1588, the year in which Eng- land defeated the "Invincible Armada." Many of England's ships and many of her sailors, to whom the credit of that great victory was due, were from the fishing fleet, which had been forbidden to set out that year. It was very natural that when they did return to their work on the banks, they should finish the warfare so successfully begun in the English Channel. In this way one of England's great competitors was taken off the field, leaving only France as a rival in the over-sea fishing industry. Meantime the attention of EngUshmen was „ . being attracted to the New World in odd ways. Govem- The fishing fleet near Newfoimdland was a strange E)^pe°toofc collection of ships of all nations, and it was natural Notice of , , , the Industry. that m that day of long voyages and meager pro- visions, the crews should exchange food and various necessities with one another. From this small beginning there arose a large trade in all sorts of goods, a trade that was in a sense illegal because it existed for the purpose of avoiding the payment of the heavy customs and tolls exacted in those days by government customs of&cials. The trade between fishermen on the banks finally reached such proportions that the govern- ments of Eiu-ope felt the loss and began to take steps to repress this illegal traflSc. In this way the governments of France and England acknowledged the importance of the Newfoundland trade and called the attention of the Old World to the possibilities of the New. The great merchant powers of the sixteenth century dreaded the rise of a commercial power in the New World, and 20 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY opposed the western development of trade with all their influ- ence, because they saw in it something that they could not con- trol and something that would rob them of their control, over commerce. In a great readjustment of commercial forces they saw only the ruin of their own trade. In this way also public attention was drawn to America. By the year 1600 England and France owned most Profits of of the ships on the banks ; of the whole fleet, about *'** two thirds were English, while most of the remainder Fishenes. " ' were French. Some of the English ships were very small, thirty or forty tons ; others were as large as three hundred tons, but the majority were of about one hundred tons burden. One old captain who had made more than forty voy- ages from England to the banks reported that his eighty-ton ship had brought him in a profit every year amounting to a little over $25,000 in our money. By i5io it is said that England had an income of nearly ten millions of dollars derived from the sale of surplus fish to other countries. It seemed that, with the aid of plenty of advertising, there would be no trouble in making the banks a valuable part of England's resources, but the rivalry with France necessitated a further step to secure England's claim to leadership in that part of the ocean. How En - ■^^ ^^^^^ ^^ '■^^^ Raleigh had taken advantage land made of royal permission to attempt the settlement of her Claim- the coast of North America, and for a quarter of a Secure, century thereafter there had been other random attempts of the same sort. Experience showed that such schemes directed by individuals were not effective ; more capital and more people were required than any one person could command. Then the "merchants adventurers" or trading companies took the matter in hand, and eventually made settle- ments along the coast from Maine to Virginia. Two things THE FISHERIES 21 should be remembered in this connection: that we Americans owe much of our local form of government to these commercial corporations, and that the persons who settled here were under the necessity of making some financial return to those who had advanced the money needed for the establishment of the colony. This latter consideration was especially strong in New Eng- land, where the people were lucky enough not only to have agricultural advantages, but to be so near the banks that they were able to realize great profits from the fisheries. We know that this latter advantage was in the mind of John Winthrop, first governor of the colony, for although he was anxious to found "a peculiar church" he was wise enough in his appeals to the more worldly wise to make use of the fisheries argument. The French also made settlements, but with this difference, that commercial and economic troubles followed them from Old France, and those in authority found it more profitable to follow the fur trade than the fisheries. This is the reason why the New England colonies shared largely in the fisheries, while the French trafl&c was still carried on from Old France. There were many reasons why the New England ': . New Eng- colonies became absorbed m the fisheries. They land a were much nearer the banks than were the people ^[■s'^g ^ ^ Community. of Old England. There was a rapidly increasing demand for fish in America and Europe. New England fur- nished an abundance of shipbuilding materials, and the conse- quent supply of ships gave the colonist an advantage over his English cousin. For many generations the population kept near the shore, and this tended to give people a familiarity with maritime afiairs. It was possible for the colonist to com- bine fishing with other work, such as farming, lumbering, ship- building, or coopering. The fisheries furnished an inexhaustible soxurce of wealth. Colonial records show that during the century 22 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY beginning with 1650 the prosperity of the northern settlements was closely connected with deep-sea fishing. The colonies had not progressed far enough to do more than market the raw materials that they produced. The time when they would become a manufacturing community was stiU far in the future. There was trouble enough when the mother country tried to enforce her wish that the colonies should remain producers of raw materials, while the colonies themselves wished to become manufacturers. For the present, however, we must find out how the New Englanders disposed of their product. By the year 1750 the New England fishermen Grades of had learned to divide their salted fish into three '^ ■ classes. The first class comprised the largest and fattest fish ; these were consumed locally, probably because owing to the presence of so much fat, they were the most difficult to cure thoroughly and because, in those days, fish were always sold whole. This class contained the fish too large to be handled economically. The second class comprised those most easily marketed ; nearly all of this class went to England, where some were consumed, while the rest were reexported to the continent. The third class, amounting to nearly one half the whole product, included the small, bony fish ; those that were too salt ; those tainted, owing to unsuccessful salting ; those broken or other- wise damaged in handling ; and the varieties not esteemed eatable by the people of New England. It is this third class that is of importance ; and it is interesting to note the ma^i ner in which the thrifty people of New England made it a source of income. „, „ , A most unlikely use for inferior salt fish seems, at The Food j- , , , Question first thought, to be as food for slaves in the West India todfe^s^*^* islands. When we consider the products of the torrid zone, it is apparent that the great staple food- THE FISHERIES 23 stuffs of the woild are the products of the temperate zone. Slave labor, as a rule, is successful in only one industry in a given region, and since the slave owners of the West Indies found the production of sugar more profitable than any other occupa- tion they must import food supplies for their slaves. Where could they get the most food for the least money ? Slaves did not last long in the West Indies, not more than six or seven years at the best, and it did not pay to spend too much in supplying them with food. Experience showed that New England salt fish of inferior grade was cheap, and sufficiently nourishing to answer their purposes, although it was of so low a grade as to be almost a by-product of the fishing industry. So thousands of tons of salt fish of the third class went every year to feed the slaves on the sugar plantations of the West Indies. Now it happened that in sugar making in the , .. West Indies there was produced a very large quan- Useful By- tity of a certain by-product known as molasses. ^ ° " • This the planters could not put to any use, yet it would be of great financial advantage to them if they could find a market for it, even at a low price. Indeed, the planters said that if they could get sixpence a gallon, the molasses would pay the whole cost of raising the crop of cane, and the price of the sugar would be clear gain. This was the situation : New England and the West Indies each had a by-product to dispose of ; the West Indies needed the fish. New England was willing to take the molasses if any use could be made of it. Hence sprung up the New England rum trade, from the effects of which our nation has suffered more than from any other one source. Judged by the cash return of the trade the manu- The Rum f acture of rum was remarkably profitable. A quantity Trade, of molasses made an equal quantity of rum, and a gallon of rum costing little more than sixpence to produce was worth 1000 per 24 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY cent more in Africa, where almost all the New England rum was sent. Moreover the cask of rum could be left on the deck, in the blazing rays of the sun. This would "raise the proof," or make the rum more fiery in its effects, and a watering process, whereby the rum was increased by a third of its bulk, could be carried out without detection. Of the articles of trade on the " Guinea coast" slaves made up the largest part. In a day when few people saw anything wrong in slavery, these circumstances seemed to the New England trader providential. So he cheer- fully went on selling his fish to the West Indies for molasses, distilled the molasses into rum, traded this in Africa for gold dust or slaves, and sold the slaves on this side of the water, perfectly ignorant of the fact that he was saddling his country with an institution that was to bring about, among other evils, the most terrible war that the United States has ever passed through. Not only fish, but flour, meal, and grains of Other 1 . , . , , Forms of various sorts were wanted m the islands, and by Island jy^Q (-jjg continental colonies were engaged in a Trade. thriving trade with the French, Spanish, Dutch, and Danish West Indies, as well as with the English islands. This occurred in spite of the fact that the English navigation laws forbade this " alien trade," and in spite of much publicity given by many pamphlets. It is interesting to note in passing that the Spanish " pieces-of-eight " that drifted into the colonies as a result of the trade with the Spanish islands were considered currency there, and later they suggested to Thomas Jefferson his ideas for the coinage of the United States. As long as England was at peace with all the world, she paid httle attention to this illegal commerce, aside from passing some laws that were never enforced. But when in 1756 the great Seven Years' War began, this traffic in food with the alien colonies took on a very THE FISHERIES 25 - , ■■. »\ . ^ .J ^ ^ ^ , -^ y: '•^J CO c >^ ^ " '-' ~J- "= 3 IT S -J Ty u '^ ^ — - --5<-^ 3 ■ 0\ rf ^- r/ = — C ^ ^.J-i "= ". ^ S < ^ , — - If— '"H — ,^ ■'■-.= ~j -J .2 -c -;: r; ,. — *" .5 b^' - - J r r ^ C Zj - '- G \^ .-;" C^ J- -C u -^ ^0- = U) ^, -J •^ g S r ^ "-• -0 Z 'ir. <^ "^ ^ > ~ '- "= 2.2c£ So 5 c 1^ — > CO •^ ■^ S £S^^-E§ c ~ rt c -a 2; CO ^^ o J4 C/2 o « Z H Z o ^ ^^ a ^ H S/3 'a p ■£ 3 Q ^ -o ^ en 26 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY different appearance. What had been simply illegal in time of peace became treason in time of war. g At the beginning of this great war affairs in Eng- Years' War land passed into the control of William Pitt, one of the greatest statesmen England has ever had. The king of England, George II, asked only to be let alone and not to be troubled with business. This gave Mr. Pitt a chance he could not otherwise have had. With a free hand he made great plans for the transformation of the England of his day into a world empire such as had never existed on the earth, greater even than had been the Roman Empire of olden days. He played very coolly, as a chess player makes his moves, using the nations of Europe for chessmen as it suited his purpose. He believed that of all of the world North America was likely to prove the most valuable. But France occupied the great central part of the continent, and in order to add all of North America to his British Empire it was necessary to get rid of France. This he did in an ingenious way. He found that between Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Teresa of Austria there was a quarrel of long standing. They had already fought one war and would doubtless be glad to fight an- other if they had the money. Now Austria and France were closely allied, and Pitt's idea was to give Frederick money with which to carry on war against Austria. This would, in turn, oblige France to give her aid to Austria. What England was very well able to do, France could not afford, for generations of misgovernment had so weakened her that in order to get men and money to aid Austria, France would have to weaken the de- fense of her colonial possessions. This would make it possible for England to get possession of the great French colonies, and the addition of these new lands to her colonies on the coast would give England almost entire control of the commerce of the continent. THE FISHERIES 27 Many obstacles hindered Mr. Pitt from carrying The Fall out this great plan, the most aggravating of them °* ^**' being the perverse way in which the American colonists per- sisted in selling to the agents of the French government the foodstuffs that should have gone to England. The prolonging of the war was fatal to the power and plans of Pitt, for in 1760 George II died, and was succeeded by his grandson, George III. This new king was young, ambitious for his country, honest and conscientious in purpose, but one of the most terribly mistaken men who have ever occupied a throne. When the war ended in 1763 and peace was made, the men who made the treaty did their best to thwart the pur- poses of Mr. Pitt and to discredit his plans. George III did not want any ministry, however good, and Pitt's enemies were able to drive him from power. So poor Mr. Pitt, broken in health and embittered in spirit, had to watch the ruin of his great plans for his country. If he had known that a little more than a century later England would have realized her world empire, he might have been better pleased. It must not be forgotten that England had two ^ ... Taxation sets of American colonies, the island colonies and and the those on the mainland, each having its separate American history, though they frequently came in touch with each other. In 1 760 the island colonies had, for nearly a century, been bearing royal taxation, levied at their own suggestion, and had helped in other ways to bear the burden of expense under which England was laboring. The continental colonies had escaped up to that time the burden of direct taxation. The reason for this may possibly have been that the great Englishman, who planned England's taxation scheme in the decade beginning in 1660, gloried in the fact that he was a New Englander by training and was the second graduate 28 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY of "Harvard College at Cambridge in New England." Just a century after Sir George Downing's time came the series of taxation laws that were the immediate cause of the Revolu- tionary War. So we may say that if the colonists had not called attention to themselves in a particularly unfortunate way, they might have escaped the troubles of the follow- ing years. The war on the sea greatly lessened the oppor- The Part tunities of the American fishermen, and we find of the Fishermen them engaged in the most romantic exploits in Revolution, their efforts to injure England's power. Indeed, the Continental navy during this war accomplished little compared to the havoc wrought on English commerce by the American privateers. In October, 1777, a witness before Parliament asserted that up to that time the Amer- ican ships had captured more than a thousand British vessels, doing more than thirty million dollars' worth of damage to English merchants. And not only on the high seas were the fishermen active in defense of American liberty. Colonel Glover and his fishermen saved the day at three important points : Brooklyn, Newport, and the Delaware river. One of the most astonishing feats in all history, the crossing of the Delaware on December 26, 1776, was made possible by Colonel Glover and his Massachusetts fish- ermen. Of the battle of Trenton the historian Bancroft says: "UntU that hour the life of the United States flickered like a dying flame. ' But the Lord of Hosts heard the cries of the dis- tressed, and sent an angel for their deliverance,' wrote the praeses of the Pennsylvania Lutherans. 'All our hopes,' said Lord George Germain, ' were blasted by the unhappy affair at Trenton. ' That victory turned the shadow of death into morning." By the end of the war one third of the children of THE FISHERIES 29 Marblehead were orphans, and one third of the able-bodied men of Gloucester were dead. During the Revolutionary War England had made every possible attempt to ruin the American Righ^to fisheries, not only because of the natural desire to tl>e ■ ■ 1 11 r 1 1 1. r T Fisheries. mjure the enemy, but because of the belief that England would receive vast sums from the sale of fish if she could only control the fishing rights. England was poor, and needed the gold and silver that would result from the sale of such a necessary commodity. The men appointed by the Continental Congress to represent it in the making of the treaty of 1783 had every reason to expect great diificulty in obtaining recognition of the American rights in the fisheries, for there were many very delicate questions of international politics to discuss and settle. But at the end of the war the policy of the British government was controlled by a group of men who had become disgusted with the colonial idea, and they wished only to be rid of the whole matter. The result was that the treaty of 1783 gave the people of the United States almost as full fishing rights as they could possibly have hoped to obtain. From r 792, for more than half a century. Congress encouraged the fishermen by a tonnage bounty. Fisheries Concerning the wisdom of this action there is much a^d the War ° of 1812. difference of opinion. It is true that before the bounty was paid and after it was stopped the industry was not prosperous, but this does not prove that the prosperity may not have been due to something besides the bounty. It should be remembered that the profits of the industry to the fishermen were never large. The rules in effect along the North Atlantic coast gave each man a share in the ship's profits, and during the first half of the nineteenth century the average share amounted to seventeen dollars per month, not including the bounty. It 30 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY was the adventurous life that fascinated the men; the "battle of life" was no figure of speech to those who engaged in an oc- cupation whose death roll was greater than that of an army. So when the War of 1812 put a damper on the fisheries, the men eagerly stepped from the fishing schooner to the privateer, and again the amount of damage wrought to British commerce raised a storm of protest among English merchants. The end of the war found the English government set on the extinction of the American fisheries. On the American side John Quincy Adams fought as bravely to save the industry as his father had done in 1783, but in 1815 the government of England was dom- inated by an arrogant spirit of hostility that would accept noth- ing but the complete surrender of American claims to a share in the Newfoundland fisheries. Under such conditions only a deadlock was possible. The treaty of Ghent was silent on the subject, and there followed on the banks a short period of armed opposition on both sides. So serious did the friction become that, through the efforts of Mr. Adams, the English government in 1818 agreed to discuss this question, along with other disputed matters. The famous "convention of 1818" followed, a treaty that resulted in more friction between the United States and England than any other ever made between the two countries. „ , In this treaty Great Britain delivered what she How the Convention considered a death blow to the Yankee industry, turned Out. j^^. ^j^g generous agreement of 1783 was entirely swept aside, the fewest possible privileges were given the Amer- icans, and even these were surrounded with vexatious condi- tions. The immediate effect of the practical exclusion of Amer- icans from British waters was that they were driven to seek other fields for their adventurous occupation. They found this field near at home, on the bank known as "Georges," a place THE FISHERIES 31 always thought too dangerous for the Httle fishing schooners to frequent. Now, driven by the spur of necessity, the men of Marblehead and Gloucester put to sea and foimd to their amaze- ment that not only was the field practicable, but, better than that, the fish were larger and more abundant than on the in-shore fishing grounds. Then until 1850 there followed a period of activity in the American fisheries and an accompanying de- pression in the EngUsh or Newfoundland fishery. It was only natural that the British naval officers should try to cause as much trouble for the Americans as the convention of 181 8 gave them opportunity to make. Our fishing vessels were seized for alleged violation of the terms of the agreement, and more than once the excitement over a seizure was made the pretext for rumors of war by some of the hotheads on either side. Yet in spite of bad conditions and bad treatment, by 1862, the banner year. New England ships with a burden of nearly 200,000 tons were engaged in the deep-sea fisheries. Again the country called on its fishermen for since the service in war, just as it had done in 1775 and in CivaWar. 181 2, and again the navy recruited thousands of men for its service. The demands of war, together with the fear of Con- federate privateers, diminished the fishing fleet, so that by 1866 the deep-sea fleet was less than half the size that it had been five years before. Of the 50,000 sailors who enlisted in the Union mvy during the war, nearly one half came from the New England coast. Since the Civil War the vexatious story of the first half of the century has been substantially repeated; treaties and agreements have been made and have been so violated in spirit that the question of ownership and control has seemed to depart farther and farther from a peaceful settlement. Political events in the Europeaii world have, however, convinced the government of Great Britain that the United States is the great natxu-al ally 32 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY of the English, and that the friendship of a great people is worth paying for in friendly oflSces. Hence when our one hundred days' war with Spain again proved the value of the fisheries in war as well as in peace, and when, soon after, the international court of arbitration at The Hague offered an opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the disputed question, England very sensibly agreed to what we will call the Compromise of 1910. A further agreement, signed July 12, 1912, brings us to what we hope will be the final settlement of the vexed question of the northeast fisheries. Conclusion. In the course of this discussion of the growth of the fisheries in the United States, we have found that the in- dustry in its beginnings was probably due to the enterprise of European fishermen, who, searching beyond the banks for drying grounds, found late in the fifteenth century a land of great promise. The northeast coast of North America served first as a drying ground for fish, and later as the headquarters of a flourishing trade with Europe and with European colonies in the New World. Throughout the course of our history, moreover, in spite of the havoc wrought in the fishing trade by our various wars and in spite of continued and vexatious legal opposition from jealous nations, the fisheries off the banks of Newfoundland have proved a source of great wealth to large numbers of our citizens. Having found food and a home in the New World, The Settlers *^^ settlers from Europe needed next to find some from industry suited to the conditions of the country that would bring in the ready money they needed to pay their debts and to buy the comforts of the old country. We must next find out what this industry was, and what effect it had on the life story of our people. CHAPTER in Lumber In the last chapter we saw how greatly the history r 1 ' n 111 1 Something of the country was influenced by the fact that even more than before the colonists reached the coast, they found ^°°'* Keeded. a food product that was destined to give prosperity to the northern section of the land for more than two and a half centuries. So thoroughly did the colonists recognize the importance of the fishing industry that the legislature of Massa- chusetts hung in the haU of representatives of their state capitol a wooden representation of a codfish; moreover, they hung it where the eyes of the Speaker could always see it, so that he might keep in mind the most important interest of the people of the community. As soon as the first European colonists were settled on shore, it was necessary for them to send to Eu- rope something that could be sold for cash. The reason for this we shall look into later, but for the present it is enough to say that the people of New England, the Middle Colonies, and the Southern Colonies must find some commodity that was abun- dant, accessible, eiisily obtained, easy to transport, and for which there was a great and steady demand in Europe. This article of commerce was found by all the colonies in the great forests that stretched along the Atlantic coast. It is a mistake to think of the present conti- Forests of nental area of the Umted States as entirely covered the United with forests in the years of the first settlements. States in the •^ Year looo. There were immense areas west of the Mississippi D 33 34 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY that were entirely free from forest growth, and there were lo- calities elsewhere in river and mountain valleys where fire or flood had swept off the trees. Along the coast there were many places where, for various reasons, the forests had disappeared, river meadows and spots where the Indians had burned off the ground to clear the way for the very meager agriculture in which they engaged. But, for more than a century, the settle- ments clung to the watercourses, fresh or salt, and it is safe to say that few places so situated were very far from merchant- able timber. The river suppUed all the purposes of a highway ; it could carry a heavy or a light load ; it was a road that cost nothing to build, and for many years, at least, it cost nothing to keep in repair. From north to south the situation was the same. White oak and other hard woods, white pine, yellow pine, and live oak, all offered the colonist a fine harvest to be had for the gathering, a harvest for which Europe had a steady and heavy demand. Western Europe had originally been a well-wooded Scarcity of country, but the changing circumstances of war Fuel in g^jjj peace during centuries of civilization had Europe. ^ worked havoc with the wood supply. In wasteful America, where wood has been abundant for so long, we do not realize what it means to save every smallest piece of wood for use. By the beginning of the seventeenth century firewood had become a luxury in many parts of western Europe, especially in the cities, and at the approach of winter the price of wood placed it beyond the reach of all but the rich. Every winter the larger cities suffered a wood famine as well as a food famine, so that to the horrors of hunger was added the discomfort of the raw, damp winter weather of the western borders of Europe. It must be remembered that it is easier for the body to endure a temperature of thirty degrees below zero in a dry climate than LUMBER 35 thirty degrees above in the chilly dampness of the winds off the sea. Add to this the fact that on account of hunger, disease, and ignorance of health conditions most of the population were unfit to withstand the weather, and we see why the New World, with "firing" everywhere, was so attractive to the poor. Not only had western Europe wasted her forests ^ England's at the expense of the home life of her people, but the Wood price of building materials for use on land and sea ""pp'^" had gone up to what seemed to the men of that day a very high price. Especially was this true in England, where the great forests of the days of Robin Hood had dwindled to the point where they could hardly be called forests any longer. Since the days of Good Queen Bess, the especial use of England's forests had been in building the royal navy as well as in the con- struction of the merchant vessels that made the commerce of Great Britain the boast of the nation. By the middle of the seventeenth century good ship timber had become hard to find and was consequently very expensive in England. One of the most interesting men of that century was John Evelyn, an Enghsh gentleman who had traveled much and thought deeply. Mr. Evelyn was so impressed with what he called a serious situation that he spent much time in trying to remedy the loss of England's forests. From his standpoint the fact that Eng- land was an island was at once a defense and a danger; cer- tainly it made it necessary that England should have a navy in case she wished to wage a foreign war, but it made a navy an absolute essential in case any foreign nation wished to wage war on England. A navy England must have, for offense or defense, and the English materials for its making were almost gone. Lack of a navy made little difference in time of peace, but Anglo- Saxons have always had a way of going to war first and getting ready for it afterwards. The time when materials for war- 36 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY LUMBER 37 ships were urgently needed was the very time when it was im- practicable to import them from the Baltic regions. A long, dangerous voyage of many weeks or even months would be needed to bring ship timber from a point so far away, and Eng- land would be long past the need of help before it could arrive. From a nearer and cheaper source England could get a better product at any time, if John Eveljm's enthusiastic urgings could induce Englishmen to plant and take good care of the thousands of white oak cuttings that the good man gave to all who wished them. How wise Evelyn was in preparing England to meet such an emergency is to be seen from what followed at the end of the century. At the time of our Revolutionary War England had such an array of foes that had she been dependent on outside sources for her ship timber, she could hardly have made the successful struggle that she did. If Evelyn had not written his Sylva and worked so earnestly for the afforestation of England, the history of Great Britain and the map of Europe would be very different to-day. Within a century after the founding of the Eng- lish colonies in North America the colonists began ^°^ ?*f ° Colonists to appreciate the value of the wonderful treasure made Use lying all along their coasts ; shipbuilding materials, porestg, so dear in Europe and so necessary, were abimdant in the settlements. So arose one of the great colonial industries, the building and freighting of ships to be sent to the mother country, where both ship and cargo could be sold. Often the ship was the joint product of a whole neighborhood, the labor, the building materials, and the cargo being furnished by the same families. So many of the colonists were seafarers that their ideas of marine architecture were very practical ; this fact, together with the excellence of the materials that they VLsed, gave the colonial ships an unrivaled reputation in the English 38 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY market. Indeed, the English shipbuilders were seriously troubled by their loss of trade and by the emigration of their workmen, who found the freer life and better conditions of the New World very attractive. A shijj could be built in the colonies for less than half what it would cost in England, and it would be of better materials and of a far better model than the English maker could furnish. From a very slender beginning all along the coast this industry became steadily larger. Between 1675 and 1715 at Boston alone over thirteen hundred vessels were built, one fifth of which were sold abroad, the rest being owned in that city. By 1770 the colonies were selling nearly four hundred ships a year to the mother country, while about one third of the total number of English ships had been built in the colonies, of American materials and by Americans. Before 1588, the year of the defeat of the Invin- Y^^. cible Armada, Great Britain could hardly be said American Lumber to have a fleet of warships. Since the days of Good England. Queen Bess it had gradually become the custom for the government to build its own warships in its own shipyards. This gave the colonists a fine market for tim- ber suitable for heavy ships of war. White oak or live oak for the frame, yellow pine for planking, white pine for masts and spars, all must be of the best, for as the years went on it became the ambition of England to be the leading maritime nation of the world. The oak from the Northern Colonies was so abun- dant that, as a rule, the builders used only "heart of oak" for merchant ships. Timber was often sent from the col- onies to Great Britain on shipboard as ordinary cargo, but there was much that would not load well. This gave rise to what were called "Jews' rafts," great rafts of masts and spars bound roughly together in the form of a ship's hull, with one mast erect, and a rude house to serve as shelter for the crew. LUMBER 39 Such a raft would take many weeks or perhaps months for the voyage across, but its value was very great, and time was worth little. The seaboard colonies were fortunate not only because timber was abundant, but because there was a great number of trees suitable for masts and spars of the largest size ; not until after the American Revolution did the "buUt up" masts come into use. In the period just before the Revolution a mast three feet in diameter at the foot, suitable for a " 74" or a larger ship of war, delivered at Portsmouth, England, was worth about $3000 to the colonial merchants. So dependent had England been on American ship timber that the Revolution would have meant ruin to the English navy, had not John Evelyn's white oaks grown by that time to a size fit for use. The European settlers in America necessarily lacked '^ •' The Manu- many of the comforts and conveniences they had facture of had at home. The very hardships of their lives ^°J*° made them self-reliant to a degree hardly realized Natural to in Europe. The distance from the home country *T °^" and the great cost of transporting goods forced the colonists to become skUlful in making for themselves such things as a few simple tools and abundant material suggested. The making of household utensils of wood is still an important industry with us, although we manufacture them by machinery, while our forefathers made everything laboriously by hand. The people of New England, especially, believed as a part of their religion that idleness was a sin, and "pick-up work" was thought necessary for every member of the household. Under this head came the manufacture of all kinds of wooden articles, large and small, not only for home use, but for the export trade. Oddly enough, much of this product was sent to a part of the world that we are accustomed to think of as weU wooded, the West India islands. 40 IXDUSTRIAL HISTORY el J p. E o -S — £ c c a LUMBER 41 The Spanish colonies in the New World were well ^ . . supphed with wood, and, for the most part, with the West valuable woods, such as mahogany and brazilwood, or logwood, as it was called in America. Logwood grew in damp tropical forests, and the task of cutting and shipping it was unpleasant and dangerous at best. But logwood unfor- tunately was often made the means of oppression by island governors. A certain royal governor of one of the EngUsh West Indies celebrated his arrival by an order that every male over twenty-one years of age should pay him five tons of logwood as " a present." As this involved a great deal of forced labor for a gift amounting in our money to about $200 per man, it is Kttle wonder that the islanders were not overfond of the name of logwood. When the wood reached Europe, the process of converting the logs into dyestuffs was often performed by convict labor. The heartwood of the logs was reduced to powder by the use of a coarse rasp, and the dust raised in the operation was thought to be very unhealthful. It was one of the most tedious kinds of labor to be found in Europe, and was therefore selected as the proper work for prisoners. Another wood foimd in the West India islands was mahogany. This, like the brazilwood, was sent almost entirely to Europe, though a little found its way to the continental colonies for use in furniture making. Throughout the West Indies almost all labor was performed by slaves, and as slaves are most profitable when set at the simplest and rudest kind of labor, proprietors in the West Indies devoted their labor to the raising of sugar cane and the making of sugar. The result was that though there was plenty of lumber in the islands and a large supply of labor, yet the timber was not used in manufacturing, and the islands were entirely dependent on outside sources for all kinds of lumber and wood products. 42 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY This dependence was of the greatest importance Wood In- dustries in to the continental colonies. We find, for example, New Eng- ^^^ nearly all of the machinery used in the manu- facture of sugar in the West Indies was made in New England of New England wood. Household utensils and furniture, especially turned articles, came from the same source. House frames and all sorts of building materials were "got out" by carpenters in the colonies and sent to the islands to be set up. By far the most common "pick-up work" in the Cask^sfoT ^^^ England farmhouses of this period was the the Sugar making of barrel parts, heads, staves, and hoops. Trade. The wood for this purpose was found in large quan- tities all through New England, frequently as a by-product of the shipbuilding industry. Moreover, the tools required were few and cheap, and the processes were so simple that many members of the family could labor on the same kind of work. Consequently the profit of the cooper's trade in early days must have been great. A large share of all the barrels made by the colonists was used in the sugar industry, and for this use, on account of the nature of the product to be shipped in them, the barrel parts had to be constructed of wood of the best quahty. The process of making sugar, as it was carried out Xli6 Old Process of m the Sugar Islands (the West Indies), was of the Claying rudest possible nature, largely because slave labor was the only kind available in the islands. When the juice of the cane had been boiled and had been allowed to stand and crystaUize, the part remaining liquid was what we call molasses, while the crystals were what we know as brown sugar, then called "muscovado." This was a very crude form of sugar and contained many impurities. Theoretically it would have been more profitable to purify it in the place where LUilBER 43 it was made, but the method of purihing followed in colonial days was what was called "claying" the sugar, and the process demanded much care. The island producers found that slaves spoiled so much that the value of the product was almost de- stroyed. Molds were made shaped on the outside Uke a cylinder, hoUow on the inside Uke an inverted cone, with slightly bulging sides ; at the bottom of the mold (the apex of the cone) was a tiiiy hole. The molds were filled to within an inch of the top with the raw sugar, tamped down hard; over the sugar to fill the mold was poured a thin Uquid mud made of a certaia kind of day. If the top of the sugar had been made perfectly flat and if the mold were level, the tiny particles of clay would gradually work their way down through the sugar, each picking up a load of impurities as it went and finding its way out at the little hole at the bottom. When the first lot of clay had dis- appeared, the space would be filled again with the mud, and the process was repeated imtil the sugar was a hard, white cake, known as a loaf of sugar. However, if the top of the sugar had not been level or if the molds had been carelessly handled, the water in the Hquid clay would settle in the lowest places, and would work its way down, boring a httle hole through the sugar. The clay would all escape through this hole and the sugar would be ruined. -\11 through the process of clarifying the sugar the very greatest care and judgment must be exercised, and these slave labor could not furnish. Hence it was necessary to ship nearly all the raw sugar or muscovado to Europe to be refined. The great difficulty in transporting sugar lay in . Workman- the fact that the unrefined sugar was so moist that ship must only a little additional moisture was needed to make ^ °* ** the sugar go back into molasses. In that case the molasses might escape from a cask that was tight enough to 44 INDUSTRIAL fflSTORY hold sugar, but not tight enough to hold the liquid. The colo- nists were able to sell the islanders the very best grade of casks, tight enough not only to hold the sugar, but to keep out the moisture that might ruin the contents. Even with the best casks the shippers reckoned on a loss of about s per cent of the cargo of a ship on the voyage to Europe ; one stave of too porous wood used in the making of a sugar hogshead might ruin the contents. _,, „ . As a rule, the barrels used in the sugar traffic and Number its allied trades were never used twice. There were two reasons for this : first, the barrels were so knocked about in their over-sea travels that they were likely to be leaky ; second, since they must always be shipped '• knocked down" when empty, the process of taking them to pieces and putting them together again the second time was entirely im- practicable. All these reasons working together gave the colonists a constant market for all the cooper's materials that they could possibly provide. The Yankee ship captain carrying a load of sugar casks to the islands exchanged his cargo for casks of molasses, taking the balance of his pay in money. This was the origin of our United States system of silver coinage. We may get an idea of the magnitude of the trade in "pipe staves" from these figures: in 1770 the colonies imported from the Sugar Islands more than three and one half million gallons of molasses, using over fifty thousand hogsheads ; add to this the number of barrels required to send the sugar to England and the rum to Africa, and it will be seen how busy the thrifty American farmer-coopers must have been. The result of this interdependence of continental tti^^Revolu- ^^^ island colonies was that, by the time of the out- tion on the break of the Revolutionary War, the island colonies Trade. ^ad come to look upon their connection with the continental colonies as essential to the island pros- LUMBER 45 perity; with the ending of the war, however, it remained to be seen whether the British government would allow the United States to continue to play so important a part in the profitable commerce of the West Indies. Would the English government think of the importance to the islands of the con- tinental products and trade, and so, wishing to keep the islands prosperous, allow the Americans to keep up their close com- mercial association with them ? Or would the government think only of the value in pounds, shillings, and pence of the lumber traffic from the continent to the islands, and reflect that all the money for the thirty-nine million shingles per year might just as well go into British pockets as into American ? The Eng- lishmen in power in 1783, when the treaty ending the Revo- lution was made, were men who did not believe that colonies were of any value to the parent state, but that a parent state should get rid of her colonies as was convenient, and should certainly not take much trouble to protect or develop them. Hence the treaty of 1783 says nothing about American com- merce. Soon, however, those in charge of affairs in Great Britain lost power, and their successors managed to bind the commerce of the United States with many restrictions and with new treaties, so that the American lumber interests found that they had lost at once their southern market for woodenware and their over-sea market for ships. With the coming in of a new and better government in the United States in 1789, shipping picked up a little, only to be given a hard blow by Jefferson's Embargo Act in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Although much lumber was natiu-ally used for shipbuilding, after that date the amount was as nothing compared to that used in former times. Where, then, did the American lumber producer find his market ? 46 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY , ^ .„ Of the countries now recognized as leaders in the A Still Larger Use affairs of the world, not one has grown as rapidly as for Lumber, ^j^^ United States. Not only has the total population increased largely, but this growth has been accomplished in less than a hundred and fifty years. Benjamin Franklin estimated that the total population of the country doubled every twenty- five years; Mr. Walker said (about 1845) that it doubled every twenty-three years. Shelter had to be provided quickly and cheaply for this rapidly increasing population, hence arose an enormous demand for lumber, not only for housebuilding but for fuel. . ^ . If we Americans have one great common fault, it Wasteful- is that we are wasteful of the natural resources of the country. Three centuries ago we took possession of a continent wonderfully favored in natural wealth. Animal, mineral, and vegetable resources have been used so improvidently that many of the forms of our natural wealth have disappeared or are fast disappearing. It is not that we have just awakened to the greatness of our sin, for colonial records show that the colonists recognized and tried to guard against such wasteful- ness. In the town records of Cambridge, Massachusetts, under date of December 12, 1653, we read: "whereas many Com- plaintes are made to the Townsmen of the vnreasonable stroy that is yet made by many persons of the wood and timber wch lieth in Comon in this Towne, not with standing all orders that haue formerly bin made for the prservation thereof. It is therefore ordered by the Townsmen that no man shall cutt of the boughes of any tree, nor fell any tree uppon the Comon for fier wood, (excepting only Such as are dead and sare) ; uppon poenalty of fiue shillings forfeture for eurie tree so felled or stowed contrary to this order. Richard Hildreth and Tho. ffox are desired to see this order executed, and are to haue the one LUMBER 47 fourth part of the fines for their Labour." Shortsighted business interests have prompted us to waste our forests, and from i6;o until loii we have actually squandered a greater ^■alue of the forest growth than we have put to a good use. As our farmers pushed westward, they found that the easiest way to get rid of the great trees was to fell them in rows and burn them LoGGixG Waste ix the Pixe Forests oe Michigan-. When these logs are burned, much of the value of the forest soil will be destroyed. when con^•enient. This process cleared off the stumps and left a good natural fertilizer on the ground. At the same time, however, it destroyed much of the upper layer of the soil, the product of decapng lea\-es and plants. The injury to this rich soil more than balanced the value of the ashes left by the burning. During the nineteenth century the invention and ^^^^^^.^^ improvement of wood-working machinery made of the wonderful progress. This machinery has been of 48 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY the greatest advantage to us in a commercial way, but it has threatened our reserve of standing timber, which has been i^sed up far faster than nature can replenish it. Products of wood machinery have become much cheaper, hence they have a larger use ; when we can buy clothespins for less than a cent a dozen, we do not worry much over the loss of a clothespin. Moreover, the advance of science has given us ways of utilizing waste products from the lumber industry. Perhaps the most profitable and economical of such uses is the process of mak- ing paper from wood pulp. Th E li h Before taking up our present problem of the pres- Idea of Col- ervaition of our forest resources, let us see what the oniza on. experience of oxif nation has been in the past in matters of this sort. We must go back to the days when England was hoping to found a great empire in the West. In the year 1600 England had formed no settled plan of dealing with colonial affairs, simply because she had no colonies. There was, however, in the minds of the English the vague idea that colonies ought to exist for the benefit of the mother country, in the sense that colonies ought to produce what the mother country needed, and ought to form a market where the mother country might sell what she produced. Thus mother and daughter would be mutually helpful. This, of course, was theory. Now the English are a home-loving people, and, as a rule, they will not leave home for a foreign country unless driven by some very strong motive, such as persecution, famine, poverty, or perhaps some inducement that promises a much better home in the new land. Hence when various English companies and individuals were trying to "boom" the new country, the advance agents sent in reports that they thought would attract settlers, laying stress on the new country's supply of articles of commerce which England needed, and which were then obtained at high cost from some European country. Among these articles was the class of products known as "naval stores." These are pitch, tar, and turpentine, all of which Naval are obtained from the sap of a variety of pine. To Stores, us, in these days of steam and steel ships, such commodities do not seem of much importance, but in the age of colonization, a large supply of them was essential to the nation that wished any great number of ships. England's ambition to become the mistress of the s^as made it doubly important for her to find a source of supply that would not be afEected by war or by a change of political policy. These naval stores were used in almost every part of the ship ; the planks of the hull were covered on the outside with a thick coating of tar, the best-known pre- servative of wood against the boring insects of the sea, and the spaces between the planks were packed with oakum and tar. The deck planking, too, was treated with tar, while the rope of the rigging likewise was protected against dampness by a coating of tar. In short, naval stores constituted a shipbuild- ing material so essential that the commerce of the world could hardly have developed without it. Naturally, then, the men who came from England to "spy out" the land and to try to induce immigration looked for the trees that would furnish to England a large supply of these necessities, and to the colonists a steady source of income. In 1588 Thomas Hariot published a renort of a ^he Ex- voyage he had made, with others, to Virginia, iiorience of Mr. Hariot was a famous mathematician, and his word probably had much weight with Englishmen. He says : " Pitch, Tarre, Rozen and Turpentine : There are those Kindes of trees which yeelde them abundantly and great store. In the vary same Hand where wee were seated, being fifteene miles of length, and five or sixe miles in breadth, there were fewe 8624 50 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY trees els but of the same kind; the whole Hand being full." However, after the English had been in Virginia a year, John Smith wrote as follows to the Virginia Company at home : " I followed the new begun workes of Pitch and Tarre, Glasse Sopeashes and Clapboard, whereof some small quantities we have sent you. But if you rightly consider, what an infinaite toyie it is in Russia and Swethl'and, where the woods are proper for naught else, and though there be the helpe both of man and beast in those ancient Commonwealths, which many an hundred yeares have used it, yet thousands of those poore people can scarce get necessaries to live, but from hand to mouth. And though your Factors there can buy as much in a week, as will fraught you a ship, or as much as you please; you must not expect from us any such matter, which are but a many of igno- rant, miserable soules, that are scarce able to get wherewith to live, and defend our selves against the inconstant Salvages: finding but here and there a tree fit for the purpose, and want all things els the Russians have." At a little later date, when a more practical business man was at the head of the affairs of the Virginia Company, the colonists were instructed to supply pitch, tar, hemp, cordage, iron, soap ashes, masts, timber of all kinds, flax, silk grass, silk, salt, and wine. Economic tendencies, however, are stronger than kings and laws, and we find that the colony produced little besides "that smokie weed of Tobacco," although they had been told many times how "extreamly displeasinge itt was to the Kinge and scandalous unto the Plan- tacon and unto the whole Company." King and law had to reconcile themselves as best they might to the fact that Virginia would cHng to its "Dotinge affection to Tobacco," and in one small corner of the colony only was any attention paid to the production of naval stores. One cause of the failure of this industry in Virginia seems LUMBER 51 to have been the fact that the colonists attempted, Naval in gathering the supply of stores, to use the method stores in employed in northern Europe; the process suited ^ewEng- to the colder climate did not seem to be profitable in the warmer region. In New England, however, the climate was so similar to that of the southern Baltic region that the Russian method was practicable. The proverbial thrift of the Yankee, too, was favorable to the development of such an industry, for in the process of making the manifold assortment of wooden articles in New England, one kind of wood could not be put to a profitable use, i.e. the "pine knots." Of course they could be burned for light, but the people had a better source of light, and they objected to wasting anything that might be turned to a more profitable use. So the pine knots were collected and distilled into tar ; how large the industry became it is hard to say, but we have a record of one year (about 1 700) when a single fleet carried away from Boston over six thousand barrels of naval stores. With the increase in the lumber trade the amount naturally grew larger, and it is evident that the New Englanders themselves must have found a use for a large quan- tity of these stores in their own shipbuilding. Tar at that time was worth seven shillings sixpence a barrel, equivalent to about seven dollars. The beginning of New York's interest in naval „ . stores is found in Germany early in the eighteenth Stores in century, when a great many Germans became exiles for the sake of religious freedom. About thirteen thousand of them went as far as London, but as they had no money, and were entirely dependent on the charity of the English, over three thou- sand of them were induced to go to New York with Governor Robert Hunter in 17 10. There were several reasons for this emigration. It was necessary to do something with these Ger- 52 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY mans, and London had supported them long enough already. A former governor of the New York colony had been eager to attempt the manufacture of naval stores from the forests of pines that lined the Hudson, but lack of labor had made it im- possible. Now the laborers were to be found, but there was not enough money to provide for them, and official delays very quickly used up the money at Governor Hunter's command. While the delays were occurring, the "poor Palatines" took matters into their own hands and left the lower Hudson, going up the river and into the Mohawk valley, where they took pos- session of a large tract of fine farm land. Here they lived and prospered and played an important part in the develop- ment of the colony and state, in spite of the discovery soon made that the pines of the lower Hudson were not the kind that yielded tar. ^, „ ^ Before we take up the discussion of naval stores The Bounty ^ on Naval in the Carolinas, the region where this industry has been most successful, we must consider for a moment the bounty and the reason for it. In theory the colonies were designed to serve as a market for the goods produced in the mother country. If this idea was to prevail, there must be no manufacturing of goods in the colonies, and certainly no goods should be produced here that could be made and sold by the mother country. But it often happened that trade intercourse between Great Britain and the colonies was obstructed for some reason; even at best, transportation was expensive, so that very cheap goods often could not bear the cost of carriage to America. Of course from the English standpoint that made no difference, but the colonists objected vigorously to paying 200 per cent more for English-made articles than for those of their own manufacture. By the year 1700, although the manufacture of goods was forbidden by English law, all the colonies carried on LUMBER 53 more or less manufacturing within their limits. This fact was often reported to England by royal oflScials, and many sug- gestions were made as to ways and means of preventing the colonists from injuring the trade of the English merchants. These officials seem to have thought that the proper way to manage the uneasy colonists was to keep them busy in the production of naval stores, so that they might get money or credit with which to buy the expensive English goods. To aid this movement, the English government, in 1704, offered bounties for the production of naval stores in the colonies. Since these bounties were large, amounting to about two thirds the selling price of the tar, it is no wonder that the colonists were glad to engage in so profitable an undertaking. It is probable, however, that they did not altogether desist from their unlawful manufacturing on account of the supposed kindness of their government. Throughout the colonial period the people of Virginia had reason to be envious of the lot of stores in their neighbors farther south. Eastern Virginia North Carolina. was not especially healthful ; its lands were low- l)dng and subject to floods, while in the Carolinas the land was higher, rolling, and sandy, and the climate was dryer and more uniform. To the hard-worked Virginian, such a region seemed like a dream too good to be true. North Carolina was well stocked with the trees from which good tar was produced, and it had a climate proverbial among the colonists for healthful- ness. The demand for tar was constant, and ownership of land was not necessary. One could exhaust the forests in his neigh- borhood and then move on to another unworked region. It was probably the most wholesome of aU the industries from the standpoint of the workman. All these favorable points, how- ever, tended to make the population of North Carolina easy- 54 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY going, not to say lazy. They took little care of the trees, and the production of tar became more expensive as the area of production retreated farther from the coast. Reckless waste of the pine forests is characteristic of Americans, and it has pre- vailed from the earliest days of the naval stores industry in the Carolinas to the present time. Under this phrase we group the various move- tionof " ments of the last twenty years whose object was Natural the preserving of the animal, mineral, and vegetable productions of the country. Conservation does not mean that the forests or the coal mines or the waterfalls should not be used, but that such care should be exercised in the use of them that they shall not be wastefully used. There is just the difference that there is between spending money, and investing it and spendiag the income from it. Ever since the first Europeans came to this country we have been expending our resources ; now we have used so much that we see the necessity of investing what we have left, and using only the income of our property. Originally the United States contained over a thousand million acres of forest land. To-day we have about half that area of forest land, 88 per cent of this remainder being in the Rocky Mountains or west of them. We must acknowledge that we have every year wasted enor- mous amounts of our forests. At the present time we waste five eighths of all the lumber cut in a year. If the pine waste from the mills were used for making naval stores, the output might be increased every year by about a third. If the saw- dust, shavings, and slabs from the soft-wood mills were used in the making of such by-products as alcohol, pyroligneous acid, and acetic acid, these waste materials would be worth many hundreds of thousands of dollars. If soft-wood refuse were used for making wood-pulp paper, we would make more than LUMBER 55 The Rlsult of cutting off the Forest.^. The rollin.s country at the foot of this mountain was orifiinally well wooded ; now that all the wood ha^ been cut off, the land is subject to droughts in summer, and is washed by the rains. The three faces gazing out over the valley have seen great and evil changes in the productivity of the soil. 56 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY five times the amount of paper now produced. If the refuse chestnut wood were utilized for extracting tannic acid for the use of leather manufacturers, the amount annually produced might be doubled. „„ . If we do not take wise care of what remains of our What these Figures forests, we shall soon have nothing left of the great **"■ treasure that our ancestors found here in the seven- teenth century. Unless we begin to conserve it immediately, the pine left in the South will yield naval stores only about twenty-five years longer. Foreign countries have shown us that a nation's forests may be taken care of in a businesslike way, and may be made to pay a profit. This is a matter of concern to every one, for wooden articles are needed by all of us, and if, through our abuse of the forests, the price of wood goes up, the cost of our living will be increased. If we con- tinue to waste our timber and the price keeps on increasing, of course, inventors will produce something that will take the place of wood in common use, but that cannot prevent great temporary inconvenience, nor can it save the vast amount of property loss that would follow the destruction of the forests. Forests usually start on a sandy or gravellv soil. Floods and ■' j b j > their Rela- unsmted to agriculture because it will not hold Forests water. They increase for perhaps hundreds of years, and every year the fallen branches and twigs and leaves decay, making in time a layer of rich, porous soil. It requires hundreds of years to make a layer of such soil only a few inches deep. This soil acts as a sponge, holding the water back, so that even a very heavy rainfall or the water from the melting of the snows in spring may be weeks in escaping from if. From a river that rises in such soil we have a gradual flow of water ; droughts and floods are equally rare. Evaporation, too, is very slow, for we have all noticed how damp the woods LUMBER 57 GULLLED FiLLD .SHOWING DESTRUCTION Of LEVEL LaND BY EkOSION. The steep soil rests upon decomposed rock, which undermines very rapidly. Near Craig, 58 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY are for a long time after the summer's sun has dried out the sur- rounding region. Suppose, however, that the lumbermen come and take out the largest and best timber. The sunlight quickly dries up the soil. The lightning or some camper starts a lire which spreads rajjidly among the "slashings" left by the A Typical Water Power. This shows a f[ill Lhiit has witliin twtnty-five years been used extensively as a source of power. The condition i>[ the rocks at the side of the falls and in the foreground shows that the How of uater was once many times greater than it now is. lumbermen, and the whole face of the old forest is devastated by a forest lire. To be sure, the fire gets rid of much material that might hinder the work of the farmer, but it also injures the thin layer of rich sr)il, sometimes even permanently de- stroying it. Then, too, the serviceable spongy character of the forest soil has disappeared, and spring and fall floods, once LUMBER 59 nothing to fear, become now terribly destructive to life and property. A hard rainstorm causes a sudden flood that may do much damage, and the sides of the hills wash down in great gulHes, ruining the land for farming purposes and choking the beds of the streams with more material than can be carried away by the waters. Not only does this hinder the navigation of the rivers, but it makes the water spread out over a wider area, and renders the fertile river bottoms temporarily or per- manently unfit for cultivation. Also, the amount of water in the river becomes very variable, and the waterfalls along its banks become useless for power purposes because they cannot be used all the year around and because expensive apparatus must be devised for taking care of the great amount of water during flood time. The problem, then, is how to take care of the lands in which our rivers rise, so as to preserve them, not only for the general uses of manufacturing and commerce, but for the safety of the lives and property of the people. Twenty-five years ago the Bureau of Forestry 1 T^ r A • 1 -1 What our m the Department of Agriculture was organized. Government and in 1891 a law was passed, making possible the ^^ already setting apart of our great national forests. The national government withdrew from sale great tracts of land that would be of little use to farmers, but would be of great worth to the country if kept imder a heavy forest growth. Much land aroimd the headwaters of rivers has been made into forest reservations, so that now the nation owns about two hundred million acres of land that have been set aside from time to time during the last twenty years. The Forest Service has done much valuable work in the practical investigation of forest fires, their causes and prevention ; in the fighting of insect pests and "timber thieves"; and in devising methods for the more economical use of lumber. A similar work has been taken up by 6o INDUSTRIAL HISTORY the separate states, though on a smaller scale. Up to the present time about ten million acres of land have been included in the state forest reserves. It would be hard to overestimate, the value of the forests to the country, even from a money stand- point. We can get an idea of it when we learn that the forest products are worth more than six hundred million dollars every year, and that the lumber industry still ranks fourth in importance among the activities of our country; it is sur- passed only by industries connected with the production of food and clothing and with the manufacture of iron. CHAPTER IV The Fur Trade Nowadays we are apt to think of furs as a luxury, _^^ . something one may have if he has money, but which mean by he does not really need. We must keep in mind, however, that just as the body must be fed and housed, so it must be protected against the weather. In many countries fur of some sort is a real necessity of life. "Fur" means the hairy skin of some animal, and as far as the present discussion goes, the word refers to the skins as brought in by the trapper, and not to some article made of them. Of course there are cheap furs and expensive furs, and the social rank of the wearer may demand luxury in fur garments, while the peasant may be obliged to content himself with sheepskins. The poor man finds the materials for his fur garments nearer home, perhaps raises them himself on his farm, while the man of wealth de- lights in bringing beautiful and expensive furs from distant places. The desire to find furs is a very different thing from the demand for fish and lumber, which were required to supply food and shelter, and which were therefore absolute neces- sities. In the early days of our country the furs to be foimd in the New World necessarily appealed only to the man of wealth, since the catching of the animals in the wilderness and the transportation of the skins for so long a distance made their cost prohibitive to all but the very wealthy. It is apparent, then, that men were attracted to the New World by the fur trade because there were such great profits to be made in it. 6i 62 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY North America was especially favorable to the Natural existence of fur-bearing animals; the great stretch Supply of Qf territory from Florida to Hudson's Bay contained all the variations of cUmate needed by many dif- ferent kinds of animals, and the wooded regions, with their frequent streams and occasional swamps, furnished homes for many different kinds of creatures that were useful as food or for their fur. At the time of Columbus the Indians on the continent probably did not number more than two hundred thousand, and with their moderate wants and wandering habits they killed so few animals that the supply must have been constantly increasing. When the Europeans came, however, the Indians found that the white man was glad to obtain the skins of many kinds of animals, and was willing to give in return things that the Indians considered valuable. Then the slaughter began, slowly at first, of course, for the European settlements increased very slowly. Strange to say, although the English settlements grew so much faster in population than did the French, for a long time it was in the French trading posts that the killing of fur-bearing animals went on faster. The first European travelers described the ani- Descrio- mals of the new country very carefully. John tions of Josselyn wrote a description of the animals of Anim^sr"^ New England about the year 1670; he included "the bear, wolf, ounce [wild cat], raccoon, beaver, moose-deer, maccarib [a kind of deer], fox, jaccal, and the hare." He even adds that Uons are sometimes found there 1 Captain John Smith speaks of raising muskrats in Virginia, and goes on to say, "Of Bevers, Otters and Martins, blacke Foxes, and Furres of price, may yeerely be had six or seven thousand, and if the trade of the French were prevented, many more." Thomas Hariot, writing of Virginia in 1588, THE FUR TRADE 63 -a ^i r • 3 °- . o_ti., ■*, ^ -o , I :, ■>; -S ?■■- 15 s SCJ .0- s E 5 ; -C fi' ^ ■u C-; ?S V^ - 1-. "^ i; "o -1 ^■■? ^ ":^ r-1 ^ >^ •s = "^ c s Cl v' >^ a C 3J "? J 1 ^1 1 1 H o) c;|i!H14i| •7 til Z^1i||i.^ii 1 t 1 r ^s ; EiTh - 1 m J- 64 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY says: "FURRES : All along the Sea coast there are great store of otters which beeyng taken by weares and other engines made for the purpose, wUl yeelde good profit. Wee hope also of Mar- terne furres, and make no doubt by the relation of the people but that in some places of the countrey there are store : although there were but two skinnes that came to our handes. Luzarnes also we had understanding of, although for the time we saw none. Deare skinnes dressed after the manner of Chamoes or undressed are to be had of the natural inhabitants thousands yeerely by way of trafficke for trifles : and no more wast or spoyle of Deare then is and hath beene ordinarily in time before." Thomas Glover, writing of Virginia nearly a century after Hariot, tells the following story, easily understood. "And now it comes into my mind, I shall here insert an account of a very strange Fish or rather a Monster, which I happened to see in Rapa-han- nock River about a year before I came out of the Country: the manner of it was thus ; As I was coming down the fore- mentioned River in a sloop bound for the Bay, it happened to prove calm : at which time we were three leagues short of the rivers mouth ; the tide of ebb being then done, the sloop-man dropped his grap-line, and he and his boy took a little boat belonging to the sloop, in which they went ashoar for water, leaving me aboard alone, in which time I took a small book out of my pocket and sate down at the stern of the vessel to read ; but I had not read long before I heard a great rushing and flash- ing of the water, which caused me suddenly to look up, and about half a stones cast from me appeared a most prodigious Creature, much resembling a man, only somewhat larger, stand- ing right up in the water with his head, neck, shoulders breast and waste, to the cubits of his arms, above water; his skin was tawny, much like that of an Indian : the figure of his head was pyramidal, slick, without hair ; his eyes large and black, THE FUR TRADE 65 and so were his eyebrows ; his mouth very wide, with a broad, black streak on the upper hp, which turned upwards at each end Hke mustachoes.: his countenance was grim and terrible; his neck, shoulders, arms, breast and wast, were like unto the neck, arms, shoulders breast and wast of a man ; his hands, if he had any, were under water; he seemed to stand with his eyes fixed on me for sometime, and afterward he dived down, and a little after riseth at somewhat a farther distance, and turned his head toward me again, and then immediately falleth a little under water, and swimmeth away so near the top of the water that I could discern him throw out his arms, and gather them in as a man doth when he swimmeth. At last he shoots with his head downwards, by which means he cast his tayl above the water, which exactly resembled the tayl of a fish with a broad fane at the end of it." To both French and English the chief interest of the fur trade with the Indians was the great profit gq„^ g^^. to be made from it. On one of the first voyages e&^^s made between of the English to the Maine coast, Weymouth ob- the Indians tained forty valuable skins for some Httle trinkets ^"^ ^"^°' ■' peans. that cost four shillings, while Captain John Smith records the fact that for a copper kettle he obtained fifty gkins, valued in our money at about two hundred and fifty dollars. It is important to remember that in the bargaining over furs between the whites and the Indians, the Europeans always set the price, and the Indians must either accept the white man's offer or keep the furs ; the latter they would not do, for the furs were of little value to them. There were three Euro- pean nations represented in this fur-trading business, the Eng- lishj the French, and the Dutch. In their dealings with the whites during the first years of settlement it is fair to say that ithe Iiidian got his money's worth, even in such a bargain as 66 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Captain John Smith's. To the Indian, who had never even thought of such a luxury, a copper or iron kettle was a wonder- ful thing, while a hatchet was an equally remarkable improve- ment on the native stone ax. A handful of glass beads fur- nished more beauty than any artificial object that the Indian had ever seen, and the gaudy colors were a great source of pride to him when the beads were used to decorate his person. So when the trader came around, or when the Indian went to the trading post at the end of the trapping season, the red man was perfectly satisfied with whatever little thing the trader chose to give him. However, after the Europeans had been in the country for a time, conditions became very different. The Indians learned after a while that the trader thought himself fortunate in the trade; they also became better ac- quainted with European articles, and were no longer satis- fied with what the trader chose to give. They found, however, that the mischief was done, and that the trader proposed to keep on with the original system of bargaining; then they knew that they were being cheated, and the fact that they found themselves powerless to protect their own interests made them all the more bitter against the trader. Ofiicially, both na- tions frowned on the sale of intoxicating liquor to the Indians, but as a matter of fact it was almost impossible to prevent the sale. Before the coming of the Europeans the Indians had tasted no kind of alcoholic liquor, while the people of Europe had been for ages accustomed to the free use of alcohol; so the rum of the Englishman and the brandy of the Frenchman had a doubly bad effect on the system of the Indian, who had not acquired by inheritance any power to resist the poison that he drank. It was very easy for the trader to make the Indian drunk, and then to cheat him outrageously. Often the trader did not even take the trouble to hide his dishonesty, but cheated THE FUR TRADE 67 by means of false weights. Irving humorously defines a sys- tem by which the Dutch traders often overreached the In- dians. "The Dutch traders were scrupulously honest in their dealings, and purchased by weight, establishing it as an inva- riable table of avoirdupois that the hand of a Dutchman weighed one pound, and his foot two pounds." Until the coming of the Europeans, a very simple form of barter had been enough for all the business No Business needs of the savage, and it took a long time to change "°' him into a man of business. The native American was not care- ful of the future in planning for his food supply, and it often happened that he was obliged to buy of the white man at high rates. In New England it was customary to sell the Indians corn on credit, on condition that they pay a pound of beaver for every bushel of corn. Corn varied in price from three to six shillings a bushel, rarely as high as the latter price, while beaver was worth, on the average, about twenty shillings a povmd. It is easily seen that such a bargain was unjust, but it took the Indian a long time to find it out, and when such a custom was started, it was very hard for the Indian to change it so as to get a fair price for his produce. In nearly all the colonies there were strict laws niegal governing the sale of firearms and liquor to the Traffic. Indians. Yet large quantities of both were sold, and the added risk in the seUing may have served the traders as an excuse for a large profit. For example, some traders in the valley of the Mohawk sold muskets to the Indians for twenty beaver skins apiece ; an average beaver skin weighed not quite two pounds, so that, at the ruling prices, the Englishmen got over five him- dred dollars of our money for each musket ! Another example may be found in the case of a treasurer of Salem colony who wished to buy land of a certain chief, and in preparation for the 68 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY bargain, made him drunk, for which he charged the Indian the equivalent of six dollars. Since New England rum was a powerful fluid, and a very little of it went a great way, it will be seen that the poor Indian paid dearly for his spree. From the standpoint of the Indian the labor required of the hunter and trapper was not of the degrading sort that his squaw was forced to do, and the rewards of his toil brought him many things that he could get in no other way, although the reward was pitifully small. All along the coast of New England, from New of^A^mafs^ Netherland north to the French colonies, the Eng- not equal lish were getting all the furs that they could from the Demand. Indians. They seem to have had no thought that the supply would some day give out unless they took care to kill only a reasonable number of the fur-bearing animals. The industry of the New Englanders, which has become al- most proverbial, is at once a good and a bad thing ; it is true that by no other people could so much have been done in so short a time. In 1632 Captain Thomas Wiggin, of Bristol, England, wrote to a friend regarding the people of Massachusetts Bay, that the English, who numbered about two thousand, had done more in three years than others in seven times that space and at a tenth of the expense. But the New Englanders' thrifty desire to make money led them to sacrifice the fur- bearing animals; between 1631 and 1635 the people of Plym- outh colony sent to England furs on which their profits amounted to two hundred thousand dollars, while at the same time, along the coast, many other places were attempting to supply the London demand. In less than a century the fur trade practically disappeared from the ports of New England. The three great commodities, fur, fish, and lumber, were relatively profitable during the early years in the order named ; but fur THE FUR TRADE 69 early disappeared from the market, while fish and lumber con- tinued for a long period to bring prosperity to the "stern and rock-bound coast " of New England. New England was a little unfortunate in that it _. _ X116 rur was a limited region, with a limited Indian popula- Trade of tion from which to draw its supply of furs. This ^^"^ ^°*' once exhausted, the opportunity for wealth that it had once enjoyed also disappeared. The next colony to the south, however, was more fortunate in respect to situation, for in its borders is found the only great natural passage through the Appalachian Mountain system. On the other hand, a navi- gable river gave access to the remote interior, so that, on the whole, the destruction of the fur-bearing animals would have taken place here as quickly as in New England, if the people of the colony had been of the same sort as the people of New Eng- land. It wUl be remembered that what is now New York was first settled by the Dutch in 1623, and that they held it until 1664. The work of settlement was carried on by the Dutch West India Company, one of the most interesting companies of that age. The settlement of New Amsterdam was, in reality, a side issue with the company, for they hardly intended to colonize, and after the trade post was established, the company did not trouble itself to any extent with the welfare of the unlucky people who had gone over to settle. In fact the company did not allow them to engage in any occupation except farming. This restriction seemed unjust, for the settlers saw that large fortunes were to be made in the fur trade. They consoled themselves by sending large quantities of lumber to Holland, laying the foun- dation for a profitable lumber business similar to that carried on by the other colonies. After a time, however, the company relented somewhat, and allowed a certain degree of freedom of trade. For this reason the fur trade of the Dutch developed 70 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY very slowly. The Dutch of New Amsterdam found the Indians of their part of the country quite numerous, and very much in- clined to be hostile on account of their previous experience with Europeans. However, the Indians of the valley of the Hudson were always fighting among themselves, and this gave the Eng- lish a chance to make friends with one tribe or another, and so to find an opening for the trade in furs. Although the selling of rum to the natives was forbidden, and although the threat of death hung over the man who sold them firearms, still the English of New York found means to arm such Indian tribes as were friendly to them, and to supply them with rum. This alliance between natives and colonists had a most important effect on the growth of the English power in North America. In 1609 one of the greatest of the French ex- French ^ ^ Alliance ■ plorers of North America, Samuel de Champlain, was indUans^ in Canada, doing his best to bolster up the power of France. With the idea of strengthening the affec- tion of his Canadian Indians for himself Champlain promised to aid them in the war that they were waging against the Iroquois. Who the latter were, Champlain had no idea; had he known that "Iroquois" was a name of the most powerful confederation of Indian tribes in existence, he might have given more careful consideration to his action. With two of his men he was able to win a great battle for the Canadian Indians by frightening the Iroquois out of their wits with the sound and effect of their musketoons, but his deed had the evil effect of making the Indians of central New York permanently hostile to the French. From the standpoint of the latter people there were two great disadvantages in this hostihty : first, the colonists lost a great deal of the fur trade that would otherwise have come to them ; second, they lost the advantage of the fact that the political aUiance of the Five Nations would have made them undis- THE FUR TRADE 7 1 puted masters of a vast territory, which, could it have been occupied and held by the French, would have made them the final masters of the continent. Of aU the native tribes of the continent the five that made up the confederation of the Five Nations J^^ ^^ Iroquois were most advanced toward civilization. They were po- had permanent homes in what is now the western po^rful. part of the state of New York, where they carried on more agriculture probably than did most tribes. They were so strong in war that they made themselves respected, and their wisdom in council lifted them above all the other Indian tribes. They occupied a great extent of territory and controlled many subject tribes, who were in some way made to feel their inferiority. In the winter the Iroquois made their headquarters in the region around Lake Ontario, but at other times of the year they came in contact with other tribes to the north, west, and south of their home territories. The Europeans who settled along the valleys of the Hudson and the Mohawk formed one of the most . f , " tact of important of the colonies along the coast, because English and it was the only one in which the English and the jjg„ York. French came into close contact. The open passage through the mountains afforded by the river valley made certain a meeting between the traders of the two nations; such a meeting would naturally not be friendly, because the two nations were hereditary enemies, and because in the American wilderness they were so far from the centers of authority that they might easily indulge in a little active hostility without any one being the wiser. Since the purpose of both in this land was to get furs from the Indians, business rivalry was added to national dislike. Hence, whether France or England should have the controlling influence over the natives of that region speedily 72 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY became a question of the greatest importance. We know that Champlain had already made enemies of the Indians, very inno- cently, of course ; afterwards, we may be sure, when the governors of Canada realized their mistake, they tried by every means to remedy this error. Then it became a question whether the Eng- lish governor of New York or the French governor of New France would prove the more skillful diplomatist. At the critical time when it was uncertain whether and the the Iroquois were to be allies of the French or of ^"^. the English, the governor of New York was an Irish- Nations. ° ° man. Colonel Thomas Dongan, a man worthy to be compared to some of the most famous statesmen of the world, both in his skill in handling men and in his grasp of great ques- tions. Dongan understood very well why the alliance of the Iroquois would be so valuable to the English. We already know that the Five Nations had their headquarters in a region com- prising western New York and part of Ontario. By "head- quarters" we mean that the permanent winter home of the confederated tribes was in that region. A tribe of Indians needed a much larger area for its support than would suf- fice a people of settled habits. They obtained much of their livelihood from hunting and trapping, gaining food, cloth- ing, and shelter from the products of the chase, and, as we have already seen, the Indians never drew too freely on the productive capacities of the forests. This fact shows that they wandered very far on their hunting expeditions. They believed, too, that a tribe should have some sort of control over the tribes of smaller size that lived near its hunting grounds. Such small groups of Indians were under the political control of the larger tribe, and their affairs were in some degree controlled by the councils of the larger group. Taking these things into consid- eration, it is probable that the hunting grounds of the Five THE FUR TRADE 73 Nations and the smaller tribes connected with them covered a great area, as far south as the southern boundary of Tennessee, west to the Mississippi River, and north nearly to the Great Lakes. Colonel Dongan understood that if he could persuade the Iroquois to declare themselves British subjects, he would not only secure the political control of that great region for England, but he would also get control over the fur trade — a very im- portant consideration when we remember that in those days a colony was supposed to be a source of wealth to the mother country. Colonel Dongan was far superior to the French Dongan as a governor when it came to "managing" the Indians. I*»pl°™8tist. By dint of tactful speeches he appealed to the pride of the Indians. He carefully planned his gifts so as to give the Indians exactly what they wanted, and he showed them that he respected them and really valued their friendship. By shutting his eyes to the forbidden sale of firearms and rum, he worked on their love of gain. Also, as the Indians had learned by experience, the English gave more and better goods in return for the skins that they brought to them than did the French traders. It was the French custom for the trader to go out to meet the Indians in their homes, and of course the amount of goods that the trader could take along with him was limited and must be made to go as far as possible, hence the high value of the French goods. On the other hand, the Indian had to go to the English- man's home to trade his furs; time was of little value to the Indian, and he got so much more from the English for his furs that he did not look upon the journey as a hardship. The French could supply the Indian with only one kind of intoxi- cating liquor, brandy, which was made in France under a govern- ment monopoly and was very expensive on account of the long journey to New France. It was of poor quality in the first 74 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY place, and the frequent thinning to which it was subjected made it of little account to the Indian. The red man found that English rum was cheap and fiery, French brandy was watery and dear. Dongan took full advantage of such facts as these. He also carried on a lengthy correspondence with the French governor, as a result of which the Frenchman felt ill used, for he suspected that he was being made the butt of ill- timed joking. At one time, for example, Dongan sent, with many profuse expressions of friendship, a box of oranges to his friend the governor of Canada ; the latter wrote back his thanks with equally profuse expressions of good will, remarking some- what dryly that he was very much obliged for the oranges, but that they most unfortunately froze on the way, and were all decayed when they reached him ! Ill nature and hard feeling on the part of the Frenchman, combined with quick wit and skill- ful diplomacy on the side of the New Yorker, resulted in giving England possession of or control over the vast hinterland of the coast colonies. This fact is of the utmost importance, for it was this that decided whether France or Great Britain was to gov- ern the great continent of North America. So carefully was Dongan's work done that all later attempts of the French to gain possession of the western slopes of the Allegheny Moun- tains failed utterly. So thoroughly did the Iroquois hold to their faith with the English that the fur trade in New York continued practically down to the time of the Revolution, long after its activity had ceased in most of the other colonies. The history of Pennsylvania is very interesting vania and ^'^ ^^ because, more than any other of the colonies, the Fur it took its policy from the character of one man, its Trade. founder. William Penn liked to think himself a great philosopher, and yet every one of his business plans went wrong. When it came to religious ideas, he was sincere enough THE FUR TRADE 75 to try to live up to his theories, and under his influence the people of Pennsylvania treated the Indians as fairly as any one could wish. It is interesting to remember that this just policy brought a great return of material prosperity, not the least part of which was freedom from the terrible Indian wars that hindered the growth of the other colonies during the weakest stages of their struggle for existence. This scrupulous and generous treatment continued down to the days of the Revolution, and there are many instances to be found that show that if the good Quakers of Pennsylvania did make great sums out of the fur trade, they also gave good prices to the Indians for what they bought of them. In July, 1742, at a treaty between the Indians and the Quakers, these were the articles given to the red men in exchange for some land : — SCO pounds of powder 60 kettles 600 pounds of lead 100 tobacco tongs 45 gims 100 scissors 60 heavy woolen coats 5°° ^wl blades 100 blankets 120 combs 100 woolen coats 2000 needles 200 yards of cloth 1000 flints 100 shirts 24 looking-glasses 40 hats 2 pounds of vermilion 40 pairs of shoes with buckles 100 tin pots 40 pairs of stockings 1000 tobacco pipes 100 hatchets 200 pounds of tobacco 500 knives 24 dozen of gartering 100 hoes 25 gallons of rum It is interesting to note the last item as contrasted with the others ; the Quakers evidently beUeved in civilizing the Indian if they could, and they gave him the rum after the bargain was concluded, not before. 76 iNiJTJSTRIAL HISTORY With assurance of fair treatment it was very Friction natural that the Indians should prefer to take their between '^ Pennsyl- furs to Philadelphia rather than to New York. This Ne'wVork. deflection of trade aroused the wrath of "the Yorkers," for they thought that they themselves should have had the large profits arising from this trade. Before Philadelphia was three years old, and while it was still a very small place, the governor of New York complained to the govern- ment at home that the people of Pennsylvania were getting so much beaver away from the New York traders that if the thing was not stopped. New York and Albany would be wholly depopu- lated! Of course this statement was absurdly overdrawn, for the fur trade of New York was immensely profitable for years after 1684, but the dispute gave rise to much political and commercial jealousy between Pennsylvania and New York, jealousy that made trouble for the people of the colonies during the Revolu- tion and after it. Intercolonial jealousy was an obstacle to colonial union, and after the constitution had been adopted, the new government was much hampered in its work by the absurd fears held by the men of one colony that the men of the others might get more than their share of political influence. Even so able a man as William Maclay, one of the first senators from Pennsylvania, who had had some tilts with Senator King of New York, wrote: "These Yorkers are the vilest of people. Their vices have not the palliation of being manly. They resemble bad schoolboys who are unfortunate at play; they revenge themselves by telling notorious thumpers. Even the New England men say that King's character is detestable — a perfect canvass for the devil to paint on ; a groundwork void of every virtue." Such was the evil inheritance of the early commercial rivalry of these two colonies. We have already seen that one of the inducements offered THE FUR TRADE 77 by the early promoters of settlements was the abun- ^^^ ^^^ dance of game in Virginia. It would seem, however, Trade of that this colony did not have as large a natural "'^*"*" supply of fur-bearing animals as the more northern colonies. The soil was richer than it was farther toward the north, and the Indians, engaging in agriculture more than did their neighbors on the northern coast, used food products instead of furs for trafl&c with the whites. Hence, when the Virginia traders had used up the supply of furs in the comparatively small area be- tween the mountains and the sea, the future prosperity of the colony appeared to lie in agriculture, for the mountains seemed to shut the people in on the west. If the student looks on the map for the upland region of Virginia, he will find that it consists of many narrow valleys running from northeast to southwest. It was not until nearly the middle of the eight- eenth century that the settlers in Virginia got up courage to leave the coast region, and the natural direction of their journey- ing lay down the valleys toward the southwest. These trading expeditions made it possible for the Virginians to renew their traffic in furs, but it also brought them into confhct with the people of North and South Carolina, who claimed that their lands went west indefinitely. Here, as in the case of New York and Pennsylvania, rivalry for the rich rewards of the Indian trade caused jealousy between the colonies that was responsible foi much trouble when the time for political union came. Of all the colonies, Virginia has the least worthy y. . . record in her treatment of the natives. New and the England, New York, and Pennsylvania owed their most serious Indian troubles largely to French interference, but the people of Virginia had trouble with the Indians from the start, and most of their difficulties were due to their own ill treatment of the red man. Injustice of various sorts not only 78 ESTDUSTRIAL HISTORY led to wars with the local Indians, but made trouble between the Virginians and the Five Nations. This is one of the best ex- amples of the effect of the Indian trade on the development of the colonies, for it was the attempt on the part of Virginia to correct some of her mistakes in Indian policy that first led the colonists to any kind of united action. The results of the Albany Congress were not remarkable, but through it the colonists became accustomed to the idea of consultation with each other. If we except this important result, the fur trade played a much smaller part in the history of Virginia than in any other one of the larger colonies. South Carolina had two great difficulties to con- Carolina tend with. Until 1732, and indeed for nearly and the Fur twenty years later than that, she was the real fron- tier colony toward the south, and had to bear the constant danger of Spanish and Indian attack. Moreover, of all the colonies. South Carolina had the most corrupt govern- ment, and this affected her prosperity very seriously. One of the great natural commercial resources of the region was the fur trade, and as late as 1719 this very profitable traffic was supposed to be restricted to the proprietors of the colony, and their agents. Many of the men who carried on the trade were not very careful to trade honestly with the Indians, and the Indian wars that followed involved the colony in terrible losses of life and property. Indeed the fear of such wars kept many would-be colonists away. So it happened that the Carolina fur trade did not reach very large proportions until about 1720, when we find that changes in the government of the colony threw the trade open to all. People then took up the fur trade with such recklessness that in about twenty-five years it had almost disappeared. This strange state of affairs is easily accounted for. In the THE FUR TRADE 79 region west of South Carolina there were no mountains to cut off the coast from the Mississippi valley, but only the low hills that form the end of the Allegheny system. This made journeying much easier than would have been the case farther north. Again, the region seems to have been much more thickly populated with the Indian tribes than the northern section, and when these natives once saw the profits to themselves of the imrestricted trade in furs, it did not take them long to push the slaughter of the animals so far that the most valuable were either exterminated or frightened away from the region. We have used the word "furs" in reference to the trade of this colony, but in reality the furs that played so important a part in the trade of the northern colonies were produced in very small quantities in the Carolinas. This trade was largely in deerskins, either "Indian tanned," or with the hair stUl on. The number of these produced in one year is wonderful. In 1720, for ex- ample, the number was nearly a quarter of a million, and a few years later it reached half a million. It is evident that, when the animals were slaugh- Westward tered at such a rate, the traders must each year Movement go farther and farther into the wilderness to find °* *® ° Frontier. peltries. This made a great difference in the profits of the trade. As early as 1675, the goods most in demand among the Indians were beads and hatchets. The beads cost, in England, about a dollar a pound, and the hatchets about seventy-five cents apiece. Of course the freight across the water amounted to something, stUl when the Indians sold the skins in the settlements, the profits were almost as great as were Captain John Smith's. But when the traders had to go so far into the back country, matters assumed a different look. There were no roads, of course, and the usual method of transporting goods was to "pack them," i.e. make them into small bundles and 8o INDUSTRIAL HISTORY carry them on the backs of Indians. Later, trains of horses oi mules were used. When the colony had been in existence only thirty years, and when it numbered only seven thousand souls, traders were obliged to go on journeys of from six hundred to one thousand miles in order to get to their customers, and the labor of transporting their goods these long distances, and of bringing home the heavy skins, added greatly to the expense. The prof- its were further cut into by the fact that traders were obliged to protect their baggage trains from the assaults of the Spanish, and the Indians friendly to them, and when the traders got into the region near the Great River they must guard against the French, and the Indian tribes under their influence. These items, together with the increasing cost of the skins, due to their scarcity, finally brought the expense of the traffic up to such a point that the trade became hardly worth while. It is to be noted that nearly all the colonies possessing any fur trade, from north to south, finally came into commercial conflict with the French. Let us see next what luck the French had with their fur trade, and how it affected the history of our continent, ^jjg The three great colonizing nations of Europe were French as England, France, and Spain ; of the three, England was the only one that achieved anything like success. Spain in the end lost all her foreign possessions, largely through serious mistakes in the way in which she planted and governed her colonies. When we speak of France, as late as 1789, at least, we refer to the king of France and his nobles, the number of the latter constantly increasing. The govern- ment of France was a monarchy of the most absolute type imaginable ; the king found his natural allies in his nobles and churchmen, or, as they were sometimes called, "the privileged classes." Although the king and many of his nobles had large incomes, they were usually in great need of money, for the ex- THE FUR TRADE 8 1 travagant habits of the French court had burdened them with debts that in many cases were too great to be paid. "Finan- cial bankruptcy" might describe the condition of the kings of France and their nobUity. To such people, then, colonization ofiEered simply a chance to get money, and this money must be obtained in the quickest way, with the least possible trouble, and, as a rule, without any thought for the well-being of those through whose labor it came. Here we have briefly the theory on which the French colonies were founded from the beginning to a period as late as 1881. It took the French more than two centuries to learn that a colonial policy that aims only at the rapid making of money and disregards aU else is a terrible mistake. The method followed by the king of France was •' ° The French somewhat as foUows: some group of merchants Monopoly offered to buy from the king the sole right to trade cdaS." in some important product of the new country (in the case of Canada, furs), paying a round sum for the privilege for a certain time, or paying a certain sum of money each year. This system enabled those who bought the monopoly to fix the price of goods as they pleased, and in this way to make large sums, in spite of the great price that they had to pay for the privilege. This was theory; in fact, a large number of the monopoHes failed to make anything for their projectors except debts that they could not pay. In one period of eleven years just after 1660, the French fur monopoly was sold six times. The success of the plan rested upon the ability of the people concerned to prevent all others from trespassing on their right to deal in those goods. It was plainly impossible to seU a monopoly of fish, for example, for fish were to be caught in countless places, and were everywhere in demand, so that it would have been impossible for any set of people to prevent 82 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY others from encroaching on their rights. Furs, however, ranked as a luxury in France, and persons below a certain social rank would not be expected to wear furs brought from North America. Hence it was comparatively easy to watch those who dealt in North American furs, and to stop illegal trading. Since the main purpose of the colony was to make of the money, the government of it would naturally be System on constructed with the intention of guarding the inter- the Colony. " ests of those who wanted to make money. There would be little planning for the well-being of those who might come in to develop the farming or manufacturing possibilities of the land. Experience showed the French that it is impos- sible to develop a country and to change it from a wilderness to a land truly French, unless the mass of the people of the mother country are in favor of such a movement and take part in it heartily. The French government found it almost impos- sible to obtain any amount of emigration to New France. The French peasants were in a most miserable condition, but for all that, it was not probable that they would improve their condition by emigration. The English success in the New World was due largely to the great number of settlers of the best sort that came to America; the difference between the success of the English and the French is shown by the fact that in 1760 the French could muster only about eighty thousand souls, scattered over a region nearly three times as large as Europe (without Russia), while the English had over a million people in their colonies, in a region only a fraction of that size. Agriculture The first Frenchmen to go to Canada were nat- in Canada, urally impressed with the great difference in cli- mate and soil between their own sunny France and the new country. It is not to be wondered at that they came to the conclusion that, in so cold a land, farming must always be an THE FUR TRADE 83 inconsiderable matter, and that the best output of the region must be fur. It may be said that all the attempts to colonize Canada with agriculturists were practically failures. The num- ber of people needed to carry on the fur-trading business in a given area wovild be very much smaller than the number re- quired to occupy the same area in the way that the English settled the land. Suppose, then, the two nations, the French and the Enghsh, should declare war against each other in the new land, and that it should come to be a matter of strength and endmrance; it is apparent that the thinly settled region would not be able to stand against its more compactly settled neighbor. Unfortunately for the peace of the continent, the „ . French and English very early clashed over the fur England in trade; as we have already seen, the colonies from north to south found the French behind them, trying to stop their westward growth. The French considered the fur trade the only thing worth while on the continent. It is true that the French aimed also at the pohtical control of the region, but although France could make the most glorious plans for the ac- quisition of the East and the West, she could not carry out these plans. To the English, the iur trade was merely a passing in- terest, a good way in which to make money while it lasted, but the failure of it did not at aU hinder the prosperous development of the English colonies. In their fur trading with the Indians, the French carried out the wasteful policy of so encouraging the production of the skins that the fur-bearing animals gradually became exterminated in a slowly widening area, commencing with the region close around Quebec and Montreal. Not long after the first settlement, it became necessary to go off on long expeditions with many canoes, in search of furs, and before New France was a century old, such expeditions covered three years. 84 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY The road led the hunters to the western end of Lake Superior, and from that point they went out into the little-known wilder- ness west and northwest of the Great Lakes. It is plain that with such a wasteful use of nature's resources, there must come an end to the French fur trade. The French were very fortunate in their possession The Im- ^^ ^.j^g g^ Lawrence valley, for it gave them the only portance of ./ > o j the St. clear entrance from the coast into the great central Valley. plain. Had they colonized the valley in the same way in which the English did their territories, in- stead of exhausting the natural supply of furs, they might have made a great success. But by 1670 their poHcy obliged them to strike off into the great northwest. Of this region little was known. The maps showed it to be a wilderness of rivers, swamps, and forests, a paradise for fur-bearing animals, but useless for permanent settlement. The maps were all wrong, but the trappers, the "voyageurs" as the French called them, brought home stories of untold wealth to be found there, if one had money, perseverance, and freedom of trade. Two of these men, Radisson and Groseilliers, so Origin of the Hud- resented the French method of controlling the com- sonsBay merce of New France that they determined to try to get backing of some sort so that they might carry on their trade in spite of the French monopoly. One of them, Radisson, had married an Englishwoman and the two men accordingly went to the merchants of Boston for help. These Bostonians, however, were too cautious to risk the needed money. Then the two Frenchmen tried the court of France, in the hope of breaking up the system of govern- mental monopoly. This, too, failed, and, as a last resort, they betook themselves to England. There they found cir- cumstances wonderfully favorable. To understand this, we THE FUR TRADE 85 must consider for a moment the English history of the previ- ous generation. In 1660, King Charles II, who had been an exile in Europe since his father's death in 1649, was invited to return by the English Parliament. Parliament guarded carefully its own interests, and made it a condition of Charles's return that he should accept the provisions of a law that Parliament had passed, called "The Act of Indemnity and Oblivion." This law stated that none of the people who had received the lands of the exiled Loyalists should be obliged to restore the lands or their income to the former owners. This meant that Charles II and most of his friends must be very poor, and that they were cut off from enriching themselves, as they might otherwise have done, from the prosperity of their opponents in England. The efforts of Charles and his advisers to provide for the poverty-stricken courtiers explain much that went on in the colonies in the twenty-five years following 1660. By the time Radisson and Groseilliers reached England to get help for their fur-trading enterprise, something had been done for many of the courtiers ; but Prince Rupert, cousin of the king, had not been helped. Here was a chance. We find that in 1668 an expedition was sent to Hudson Bay to look over the land. It was a very successful experiment, and brought home the promise of great riches. So in 1670, a company was formed, with Prince Rupert as its nominal head, called "The Honourable Company of Merchants- Ad venturers Trading into Hudson's Bay." Charles gave it the right to conduct a trading business in the region of Hudson's Bay. Just how he got the right to make this grant does not appear, but he was so considerate of French interests as to specify that the employees of the com- pany should be careful not to trespass on territory occupied by any other Christian prince ! The charter- of the Hudson's Bay Company was indefinitely 86 rSTDUSTRIAL HISTORY The worded, and when the company really got to work, Hudson's it did about what it pleased. Hudson's Bay is a pany and thousand miles long from north to south, and the the French, country drained by the streams that flow into it comprises an area larger than Europe. This area the company proceeded to claim, and to govern politically, as though it were a country of its own. The "height of land," as it was called, the waterparting between the Hudson's Bay and other systems, was claimed to be the boundary of their land. This line comes nearly to Lake Superior on the south, and extends to the Rocky Mountains on the west. The French objected to such a sweeping claim on two grounds. First, they desired political control over that vast region for their own king ; second, they wished to monopolize the valuable fur trade of the Indians, for it was only the profits of that trade that made the New World of financial value to France. It was essential to the success of the French that they keep the English out of the region to the north of New France. The difference in the way in which the two nations in Methods Conducted the fur trade is very interesting. The of English Frenchman made long expeditions into the Indian and French ,...,, ... t i- r Traders. country, livmg in all respects like an Indian, often even marrying an Indian squaw and joining her tribe. He carried his trading stock with him, and, as has already been explained, the only liquor that he could take was brandy, of poor quality and high cost. The English, on the contrary, built small fortified trading posts on the Bay and its tributary rivers, and expected the Indians to come to them. Here the Indians could get rum and a far greater variety of European goods than they could obtain from the French trader. Probably the Indian got better prices for his furs from the English than from the French. It was also true that the most valuable furs THE FUR TRADE 87 were to be found toward the north, so that the EnglishinHudson's Bay had a geographical advantage over the French in Canada. When the proceeds of the French fur trade began ^^^j^ia g to show the bad effects of the English competition of Hudson's in the north as well as in the south, the French gov- ernor of Canada sent out expeditions to destroy the English trading posts. This hindered for a time the development of the English trade, but it was only a temporary check for the English, as New France was not prosperous enough to stand the expense of many expeditions, essential though they appeared to be. New France was always in a precarious financial condition, and its governors not only had little help from home, but they were hampered by the form of government under which they worked. There were virtually three heads to the government of New France, a governor, who was the political head ; another official who had charge of finances, and a third, who was the religious head. It was the duty of each of these three to spy on the others, and to report to France, secretly, on the doings of the others. This system was supposed to keep each official true to the French idea of a colony as a producer of wealth for the group of capitalists and courtiers who had obtained the monopoly of the trade. At any rate, the system resulted in weakening the government, and any aggressive action was impossible. The Hudson's Bay Company, on the contrary, while it may have assumed more rights than the k ng had given it, at least had the moral support and practical backing of the English government. This Company was often unscrupulous in its behavior, but it was strong and united and successful, and was certain to make serious inroads on the trade and power of the French in Canada. Of all the kings of France, Louis XIV was perhaps ^j^^ the greatest and at the same time one of the most Danger of unscrupulous. His long reign, from 1643 to 1715, 88 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY saw France l)oth at a lii.^h point of glory, and at a terribly low ebb of fortune. Like some other men concerned in French col- onization, he was able to make great plans, but he could not carry them out. His dream was to make France the leader of the world at the expense of other nations, of England especially. But though he fought three great wars, he succeeded onh' in 'A'""'^:^: -J^I^^' \.l^. 'y^ ' / / \A\ I \ — t r Ji-'-'ji i>.J-y.,.:. A ■■-■■■/?■■ A ,'\ M,\l' OK NdKlII Ami-.I^Ii'\ \]\IiK \l;i)lT I()yD. Ri.licrt Monlc-n «rn a f^imous KnKlisli nci'igriiphcr who livi^d and worked in Uie second li.-ilf of Ihc seventeenUi century. Although lie knew as much as any man of his time about such matters, he knew nothing aljout the northwest coast of America. injuring France, with the result that France to-day is one of the most backward of ci\-ilized nations. His army was the thing essential to success, and to recruit this and to pay its expenses he thought himself justiiied in draining New France of inen and in taxing the cohjny to the limit of endurance. He did realize that the future of the world's growth lay in the West, not at home. Unfortuiiately Louis XIV was followed by a weak king and a less effective government. Louis XV, who ruled THE FUR TRADE 89 from 1 7 15 to 1774, was fai,cd with the lack of men and money, and repeated the shortsighted action of his prede- cessor. How mortified he woukl have been, liad he known that he was nothing but a pawn in the hands of William Pitt, who did realize the vast importance of New France to England, and who wished to weaken the power of France in America as A Map of North .-Imkrica iude about 179S. Lamarche had a habit of putting a band of color along the boundaries; the lack of such a band on the northwest coast indicates that he knew nothing about those regions. Notice the gain in knowledge in the century between ilorden and Lamarche, and compare both maps with the modern map of North America. much as possible, so that the armies of England should have little trouble in overthrowing the power of France in the New World. We have learned that Pitt's plan for the subjugation of New France was complete^ successful, and that by the treaty of 1763, France gave up nearly aU her possessions on the con- tinent of North America. Thus was ended the influence of the French fur trade on the history of our country. go INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Th Fur About the time that the long struggle closed between Trade of France and Great Britain on the east coast of North the ^Vest America the activity of explorers in the northwest brought about a renewed interest in the fur trade. Beginning with the period of our Revolution, there came forward a new group of explorers, more interesting than the earlier ones, because they are more nearly our contemporaries, and because we know so much more about them. English, Spanish, and Russian ex- plorers began almost simultaneously to arrive in this region, the Russians approaching it from the north, the Spanish from the south. To these nations the fur trade was the attraction. Of the three nations in question, England and Spain had the best claim to the trade, if claim it can be called, for Drake had (in the winter of 1578-9) sailed as far north as San Francisco, and one, perhaps two, Spaniards had at about the same time sailed further north than any other European power. It is interesting to remember th^at although Drake wished to plunder the Spaniards as much as possible, his chief reason for pene- trating so far north was to find a direct passage through America to connect Europe and Asia by water. This passage was sought for commercial purposes, of course; for at that time commercial leadership of the world seemed to all men to be the key to political power. If we think over the men who have explored the the North- Americas, it will be seen that, even beginning with ^^^' Columbus, the aim of a large proportion of the voy- agers was to find this connecting passage. When we realize how scant was the geographical knowledge that Colum- bus had, it is evident that he was justified in thinking that he had reached the islands off the southeast coast of Asia, and it is not astonishing that he lived and died in this belief. If we compare the southeast coast of Asia and its islands with the cor- THE FUR TRADE 91 responding coast and islands of North America, it is clear that there was some reason why numbers of maps were drawn show- ing no western continent. When the existence of such a body of land became known, however, Europeans found that they were just as far from Asia as ever, unless they could find some way through this unknown extent of land. Then came a long period, from 1497 to our own time, during which many men attempted to solve this geographical puzzle. Volumes might be written, filled with the romantic story of these attempts, from Henry Hudson, set adrift in the dreadful waters of Hud- son's Bay, to Amundsen, passing through the Frozen Ocean with the ice pack. Almost all of these trials began at the east- em end of the desired passage. In the course of the sixteenth century, a very The Straits curious myth sprang up of a strait connecting the °*A™*°' western coast of North America with the waters of the interior, possibly Hudson's Bay. The story is best illustrated on the famous map made by Mercator in 1569, where the Straits of Anian are shown as extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific, with the intermediate section very vaguely drawn. All sorts of stories arose about this fabulous strait. Even its name is hidden in mystery, for no one knows its origin or its meaning. Occasionally a man was found who claimed to have been through it, and once a Dutch vessel returned to Europe, reporting that it had passed from the South Sea to Hudson's Bay through the Straits of Anian. This romantic story took a wonderful hold on the minds of the mercantile world as well as of the political world. In 1758, the British government struck a medal to com- memorate the capture of Louisburg from the French, and on one side of the medal is to be seen a picture of the continent of North America, pierced from the western coast to the Great Lakes with the Straits of Anian. 92 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Two hundred years after the time of Mercator's map, these straits took on a new importance ; the spirit of imperialism was abroad not only in England, but in other countries as well. Russia was just awakening to the possibilities of her great realm, and was extending her power eastward. Between 1728 and 1741, a Dane in the Russian service, Vitus Bering, had found and explored the narrow bit of water between Asia and North America. Russian explorers pushed farther and farther down the northwest coast of our continent, trading with the Indians and holding the country for the Czar of Russia. Even the Spaniards in Mexico, rapidly losing power as they had been doing for nearly two centuries, seemed to feel a new stirring of life, and made a vigorous attempt to extend and strengthen their power northward along the Pacific coast. Of all the countries that became interested in the undertaking, England was the most determined ; it was plain that events on the west coast of North America were moving rapidly, and that the political control of this vast region would soon be settled. Captain James Cook, whose romantic story was the basis of Cook's Voyages, was sent out to find the Straits of Anian, if they existed, and to see whether there was a way around the northern end of the continent. He arrived on the northwest coast of our continent diu-ing the early part of the Revolution and sailed from what is now Vancouver Island up to Bering Strait, possibly beyond. He reported that those waters were almost alive with otter and seal, and that the Indians of the mainland had peltry in abundance and were willing to trade on terms almost as good as those Captain John Smith made for his famous copper kettle. Carrying out his instructions, on August 9, 1778, he rounded the northwest cape of North America, without finding any passage through the continent. On his way home, Cook was murdered by the natives of the THE FUR TRADE 93 Sandwich Islands, and his expedition returned home by sailing westward. The crew of the returning expedition, stopping at Canton with a few skins, found that they were able of the to sell for a hundred dollars, skins of the sea otter J°''*''^^* ' Fur Trade; that had cost them less than twenty-five cents. This was enough to send traders by the hundred to our northwest coast. The first of these trading ships returned to China in 1785, with a cargo of five hundred and sixty sea-otter skins that sold for about seventy-five dollars apiece. Other fur-trading voyages foUowed quickly. One man records that the result of his winter trading was worth about twenty-five thousand dollars in Canton, while the cost of his trading goods had been about one seventy-fifth- of that amount. Another trader records in his diary that in one inlet he bought furs to the value of fifteen thousand dollars for a chisel. It is no wonder that he was "grieved to leave them so soon." What would the result of such commerce naturally be ? At first the political reasons for exploration would be lost sight of in the rush to secure the vast gains of the trade. Sooner or later the nations concerned would awake to the necessity of guarding their interests in that region and would see the vast advantage that actual possession would give the nation that could secure for itself the sole right of occupation. A glance at the map of our northwestern coast ^j^^ will show that the most noticeable feature of the Contest for Possession coast line is the great number of inlets that pene- trate the coimtry, very much as do the Norwegian fiords. On the western coast of Vancouver Island, about two thirds of the way toward the north, is one of these inlets, Nootka Soimd. Partly by chance and partly on account of its central position, Nootka Sound became the headquarters of the group of traders 94 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY of all nations who flocked to the Pacific coast. Spain was the first country to see the importance of possessing Nootka Sound, and therefore occupied its shores during the summer of 1789, incidentally seizing two British ships. As a result, war was threatened between Spain and Great Britain, but late in 1790 the two governments came to terms, agreeing that the country north of California should be open to both English and Spanish for trade and settlement. This meant that Spain no longer claimed to be the sole owner of the coast from Mexico northwest- ward indefinitely, and the practical effect of the agreement was to throw the fur trade open to any nation. In 1789 began the terrible series of wars known as the wars of the French Revolu- tion ; although England was not directly interested in the begin- ning of these wars, she was dragged into the contest. As the situation became more and more critical England found herself so involved that she could pay little attention to what might be happening on the other side of the globe. When, after the close of the American Revolution, England tried to crush the commercial energies of the new American Republic, she made a very great mistake, for the restless energy of the Americans sim- ply led them into new fields, farther from home and even more valuable than the smaller fields from which they had been shut out. Such results include the beginning of the China trade, the greater extension of the whaling industry, and a share in the northwest fur trade, which in the end made the Pacific coast south of the forty-ninth parallel a part of the United States. Among famous American families of the Revolu- Dis^covery tionary period was the Ledyard family of Connect- of the icut, one of whose members died heroically at the River. capture of Fort Griswold on the Connecticut shore, in the bitter struggle between Loyalist and Patriot. Anotlier member of the family, an adventurer with a most TiIR Fl'R TRADh j I J|3 _'^:^>^3j3S IKE ilsTERIO: OF Old Fort Griswold. U'hen Arnold's marauding expedition burned Xew London and. crossing the Thames, attackec an unfinished fort, a Xew Jersey Ton' commander showed the ferocity of sectional hatrec by stabbing Colonel Ledyard as the patriot surrendered, driving the colonel's own swore throuqh his breast. One picture shows a bird's-eye \-iew of the still unfinished fort fron the top of Groton Monument; the other show* the little slab within the fort, marking th( 96 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY dramatic career, went with Cook on his last voyage. Aftei returning to America, Ledyard tried to interest American mer- chants in the great possibihties of the Northwest, by de- scribing what he had seen of the advantages of the region. Probably as a result of his activity, Boston merchants became interested in the fur trade of the Pacific coast, and in 1787 sent out two trading ships, one of which was commanded by Robert Gray. The success of these ships was remarkable, and within a very short time the eastern merchants had fitted out a large number of such expeditions. In one of these, this same Captain Gray made a discovery that was of the greatest political as well as commercial importance to the United States. In the summer of 1792, as he was sailing along the coast a little north of the forty-sixth parallel, he entered the mouth of a large river, called by him "Columbia's River," and sailed for about thirty miles up its course, trading with the Indians. This discovery was all the more fortunate since English and Spanish navigators had narrowly missed finding this river. Only two weeks before Gray discovered it, Vancouver had approached the mouth of the river and had concluded that it was nothing more than the mouth of an inlet, like hundreds to be found on that coast. So narrowly did the English fail to obtain by discovery a claim to the great river of the northwest ! . . England had been for so many years occupied in the Sea with the French wars that the United States had a ^' fine chance to make the most of her advantage in the Pacific, and she did so as far as the ocean trade was con- cerned. American ships visited the coast and went up and down among the islands and inlets, trading with the Indians, taking the produce to China, where the furs were exchanged for silks, teas, and other oriental goods in demand in the United States. On Wednesday, May 3, 1815, the brig Cossack, 136 tons '*-''?:; X "'"X i_ /'^^t., I hi '^ ""^^A. r^ ChleW-ol »iV G ul sx^.^^Ws^"'^^ ^^ - ■vMexIcii »> Veva Cn lew Orleans^ S NORTH AMERICA Scale of Miles Oc Gapitala ® Other Cities • '1, C E N T J A I^^vEaramo Comparative Area [pENN.t Sea LESSEJi ANTILLES, S S|u T3 45,215 Square Blilcs 1HJ° tongitiiae 100^ West 90° from Greenwich 70° THE FUR TRADE 97 burden, left Boston for "N. W. America." Four days after start- ing the captain wrote in his log, "Sunday May 7th 1815 This day Smart breezes from the Nothrd and Eastrd — Handled and Reeft as nescessary found amongst a crew of 16 men but one Seaman Good Lord dehver us from Accidents." The log of the Cossack is somewhat monotonous, but sometimes things out of the ordinary happened. " June loth, This Day Same as Yesterday. Caut Shark and plenty Boneters. Cours Made three Miles backwards. Latt. Obsrd 6° 3' N. Lon in 26° 50' W." Jime 18 she crossed the line. Sunday, July 2, "at 6 in the Afternoon ran in to the Harbour of Rio Janeiro and Anchord broke out the Cargo took out the Water from the Main hatch & stowd it forward and abaft Restowd the whole Cargo trimd the Ship 16 inches by the st.ern being no more than six before Ship two Seamen having none before, bot beef and vegetables pd $112 for all Charges & Saild on Tuesday July nth at 6 in the Morning with the land breeze and at 12 Meridn the Sugar loaf bore NNW 15 miles. God save the Commonwealth." Evidently his sailors were a poor lot, and he might have added something about his treatment by the Brazilians. September first the brig reached her farthest south, 58° 20', and commenced the long run northward, reaching the Sandwich Islands Novem- ber 6, a little more than six months from the time she had started. Here they stayed nearly a month, refitting, doctoring up the crew, loading cartridges, molding bullets, overhauling the trading goods, and buying "Hoggs." On New Year's Day, 1816, the Cossack dropped The her anchor near Cape Bald, and the real business trading, of the voyage began. The events of the next eleven months would fill a book, and are exciting enough to satisfy the most romantic reader. Always on their guard, they traded as best they could, part of the crew standing with loaded muskets ready qS industrial history to fire on the customers. Sometimes there was serious trouble in spite of these precautions. The worst that happened was the kidnapping of several of the crew, who were recovered in true Sherlock Holmes style. The captain and one other man seem to ha\-e done all the bargaining, but there were times when /'/>-;v,-<^--'/-.'2 ,:aV^' ,-.■'..' '•-- •-- ■ ■^''-Cyt^^ /.C'C^Xy /A.^-y- fi_, 'fyy//' ^"- : iyy-r'y^ : -' -.^^ ''•yy^^^.e ;,'yr-<'- Tin: Hni'.K Bit. " Wuilnt'sday, Dec i6th, iSiO. BlackiiiK Ihe bends, j.ainting outside, in tlie afternoon del'il the kitig t,wo nine[iound can -nonades, and two small brass one pounders, witii shot 2 kegK's powder, as no other article in our possession would purchase what was wanted for the Brig's use, at lo P.M. with a gentle land breeze got under way stood out, W.S.W. 3 leagues at 12, st(joi! to the Nd." From tlie Ing of the lirit.' Cowirk; the only inst:mce the autiior lias heen able to find where a native was ahle to cet the better of the wliite trader. The fruit, " hoggs, " and water needed could not have cost ten dollars, while the property flenianded in return cost at least S250! the men of the crew were allowed to trade on their own account. The V03'age back to the Sandwich Isktnds Ijegan as soon as the trading season was over, ;tnd on January 12, 1817, they started for Canton, whence, after trading their furs for goods in demand at home, they set off for Boston via the Sandwich Islands and THE FUR TRADE 99 the Horn. How much do you suppose they had to show for the three years thus spent? They bought four kinds of skms : Sea otter, ^j^^ ^^^ 1088 ; Sealskins, 663 ; Tails, 1304 ; Beaver and and the Land otter, 653. goods : — Blankets . . . Molasses (buckets) Rice (boxes) . Cloth (fathoms) Powder (boxes) Shot (bags) Muskets . . Iron kettles Axes . . . Hatchets . . Looking-glasses India cotton (pieces' Bread (barrels) . Combs .... Flints .... Balls .... Vermilion (papers) Files .... For these furs they paid these Goods, 2238 Needles 1510 434 Thread (skeins) .... 534 376 Shot (small bags) . . . 795 604 Brass rings (dozen) . . 48 2135 Biscuit 247 14I Gowns 3S 52 Coverlets 5 28 Handkerchiefs .... 27 116 Powder (poimds) ... 49 43 Powder (papers) ... 47 407 Fishhooks (boxes) ... i 228 Fishlines 10 38 Knives 22 133 Pistols 7 1863 Rum (canteens) .... 4 3691 Whisky (canteens) ... 2 378 All the old clothes on board 32 It appears that one sea otter was worth: 4 blankets, i ax, and one piece of cotton cloth : or, i box powder, i small bag shot, and 12 flints; or, 3 blankets, i looking-glass, 10 papers vermilion, and 3 flints. Since otter skins must have been worth at least $100 apiece at Canton at that time, the profit was high. In Two Years before the Mast Dana says that on the Cali- fornia coast 300 per cent profit was the rule. After the selling of the furs in Canton, there were two more chances to make a profit. From the size of the eastern trade and the uni- form prosperity of the voyages, we can see where the eastern lOO INDUSTRIAL HISTORY cities obtained a large part of the capital that went to start the first large manufacturing companies in the 1820's. . , . The permanent occupation of the northwest land Americans ^ ^ in the Land by settlement, however, Americans were very slow to take up. It is true, all over the world, that when- ever any business offers unhealthily large profits, the slower and less promising but vastly more important issues must wait. As early as 1782, Thomas Jefferson was urging the importance of some move to Americanize the territory west of the Missis- sippi River, even as far as the Western Ocean; he saw that the existence of the union would be in danger as long as there was a foreign power holding land adjoining the United States on the west. It was twenty years before Jefferson had any opportunity to carry out his plans. When he became President, he was so impressed with the importance of knowing more about the western region that he planned an expedition to ascend the Missouri, cross the divide, and go down the Colum- bia to the sea. When his plans were almost completed, there came the chance to buy Louisiana, an opportunity that Jefferson was statesman enough to grasp, when a lesser man would have hesitated and lost the golden moment. With this doubly im- portant reason for knowing what lay behind the unknown west, the Lewis and Clark expedition left St. Louis in the spring of 1804, made the round trip overland to the mouth of the Co- lumbia in about two and one half years, proving that there was a practicable road by land from east to west, and bringing back accurate reports of the attractive nature of the new lands and the region west of the Rockies. While the Americans made no attempt to develop the fur trade on land, the English had two companies in the field, the Hudson's Bay Company and the West- ern Fur Company, both well managed, and with an enormous amount of capital. So it must be said that while the Americans THE FUR TRADE roi: were the first to explore the Columbia River from both ends, the British were the first to occupy the territory^ It must not be thought that we allowed so fine a chance to escape through carelessness, but the popu- American lation of the country was still small, and the energy *™'' ^' of the people was only sufficient to take care of their great terri- tories near home. Of the small number of real attempts at an organized fur trade the most important was that of John Jacob Astor of New York. Mr. Astor had not been very successful when the War of 1812 put a stop to his activities, and his plant was sold out to British interests. Two Englishmen, MacKenzie and Fraser, had added much to the strength of the British companies by their explorations to the north of Puget Sound, and until the Convention of 18 18 it seemed that England might, after all, get the full control of the Northwest. The northern boundary of Louisiana was the forty- ninth parallel to the water parting of the Rockies, and the government of the United States was willing to continue the same boundary west to the sea, but the English insisted that the Columbia River should be the dividing line. In the Con- vention of 1818 the question was left open, and it was provided that the people of either country should have equal rights of every sort in the Oregon country for a period of ten years. This policy of joint occupation did not work well; the two British companies continued to have fuU control of matters on the main- land, and the few Americans there were really dependent on EngUsh protection. In the east, however, there was a slowly growing party that realized the importance of using every ad- vantage ofiEered under the Convention of 1818, and this group of men did much toward awakening public interest in this new region. In 1827 it was decided, much to the advantage of the Americans, that the joint occupation agreement should continue indefinitely. I02 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY ^jjg It will be remembered that when discussing the American French and English competition for possession of van age. ^j^^ eastern section of the continent, we found that the victory of the English was largely due to the fact that they occupied and developed the land, while the French merely stripped it of fur-bearing animals. It looks very much as though Providence had reserved new lands for those people who were the most likely to make good use of them. The two English companies were well planned to get full benefit from the fur trade, but they could do little toward settling and civilizing the fertile valleys. The Indians of that region were slowly being driven back by the white man, the country was gradually being stripped of its fur-bearing animals, and the English companies could return nothing to the country to take the place of what they were taking. The great opportunity for America lay in the gradual settle- ment of the "Oregon country"; farmers and cattle raisers, lumber men and miners, all found here a splendid field for their industries. Hence, when in 1827 the joint occupation agree- ment was continued indefinitely, it meant that the American element in the region would steadily become stronger, while the British element would only diminish in influence. The great migration was delayed until 1843, but within a few years the number of pioneers rose to thousands annually, while the rush to the mines in 1849 and after made American occupation of the country complete. Before this time, however, in June, 1846, the joint occupation agreement was ended by treaty, and the forty-ninth parallel was designated as the international boundary. This gave to the United States a region one third larger than the British Isles ; to be sure, it had lost much of its value as a fur-producing country, but its other resources promised to be far more valuable. THE FUR TRADE 103 As early as 1821 there had been friction between ^j^^ the United States and Russia over the question of Purchase of A 1 H s lrii the fur trade of Alaska, and in 1824 they had come to an agreement on one point at least. Russia agreed to con- sider the parallel of fifty-four degrees and forty minutes as her southern hmit on the northwest coast of North America. The relations of the three nations in the Alaskan region were friendly ia the main, for the Russian traders were so far from home that they could not afford to quarrel either with John Bull or with Brother Jonathan. The small disputes that did arise were sup- posed to be settled by the purchase of Alaska by the United States in 1867. As a matter of fact, however, the United States simply fell heir to difficulties over the fur trade, serious enough to bring us into grave danger of conflict with Great Britain on more than one occasion. The fur seal of the northern Pacific Ocean is an The Fur entirely different sort of creatiu-e from the southern ^®^' seal, and has different habits. Its fur is very valuable, and compared to other varieties of fur, it is cheaply and easily ob- tained. The seals have their summer headquarters on certain islands in Bering Sea, and on the approach of cold weather they leave the land and go south in a leisurely fashion, describing a long curve toward the east or west, bringing up again at their island the next spring. During their stay on the island the females leave the shore every day to look for food, and are some- times obliged to go two hundred miles out to sea to find the food that they need. When Russia owned all the islands, and for a time after the purchase of part of the islands by the United States, only a part of the young males were kiUed each year, and great care was exercised to prevent any decrease in the size of the herds. In time the great profits of the traffic attracted men who had no right to kill seals on the islands, and they found I04 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY THE FUR TRADE 105 that they coxild kill many seals outside the three-mile limit without trespassing on the land. This "pelagic sealing" was terribly destructive to the herd, for many females were killed, and this meant a very rapid loss in numbers. The attention of our government was called to the rapid disappearance of the fur seals, and plans were made to avoid the mistake of exter- minating them. When the government determined to stop pelagic seaUng, it found that there were many Canadian vessels in the business, and England set up the claim that any one had a right to take seals on the high seas, and denied the right of the United States to interfere with the Canadian sealers. In 182 1 the Czar of Russia issued a decree, setting ™. _ . up the claim that all the north Pacific, from Bering Sea Closed Straits to a line drawn from 45° north latitude on the Asiatic shore to 54° 40' on the American shore was a " closed sea," i.e. that all that water, with everything in it, was the property of Russia, and that no one could so much as go into those seas without trespassing. Europe and Arnerica protested against such a claim, for the southern line was four thousand miles long, and such a claim of ownership of the high seas was entirely opposed to the law of nations. The Czar did not press the matter, and allowed his claims to drop, but the wording of the later agreement, that of 1867, was so vague that it was not clear whether or not the United States really owned the waters of Bering Sea. Little was said about the matter until the government, in its attempt to stop pelagic sealing, claimed that we did own our portion of Bering Sea, that the fur seals that resorted to the islands therein were our property, and that we could stop others from taking the seals, no matter where the seals might go. Accordingly in 1886 a United States revenue cutter seized three British ships engaged in pelagic sealing. This brought the Io6 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY matter to a crisis; the question must be settled peaceably in some way, or the two coimtries must decide it by war. Arbi- tration offered a remedy, and in 1893 a court of arbitration met in Paris. As a result of its long and painstaking deliberations, the claim of the United States was declared to be unfair on every point. It was decided that the fur seal was a wild animal, and belonged to any one who might capture it, and on the high seas any one might do this. Since 1893 many scientists, notably David Starr Jordan, have examined the situation and have shown the serious danger of the entire loss of the seals, but in spite of all the efforts of our government, at the end of the century Great Britain had blocked every effort to come to an agreement. Since 1900 England has come around to our view that pelagic sealing has nearly exterminated the seals, but the problem is still very puzzling. Unless some agreement more effective than the present one is presently accomplished, the fur seal will soon be a thing of the past and will join the ranks of animals that have been exterminated by the greed and folly of man. So we see that from the beginning of our history the fur trade has played a very prominent part in the development of the country. It put wealth into our pockets when we were in great need of money, it led us farther and sooner afield than we would otherwise have gone. It was the pioneer industry. With the shortsightedness of children, we have wasted this great gift of Providence, adding one more to the list of natural resources gone from us. CHAPTER V The Domestic Problem The European settlers in North America found a world very different from their old home. Instead of the lack of many things necessary to life, they found a great abundance of all things from which prosperity may arise. Their great trouble, however, was a lack of men to labor. Work seemed to be the watchword of the new country ; not only did the necessity for laboring exist, but the social ban attached to laboring with the hands that existed in Europe did not have much hold on the hfe of the early colonists. In England the word " nobility " implied the ownership of land ; the owner of the land might rent it out to others who must work it with their hands, and it was only in this way that the owner could get any return from his lands. An Englishman of rank would have thought himself degraded if he had been forced to work as a laborer. His life was at the disposal of his king if the wars of the country needed it, but the old motto "noblesse oblige" made a nobleman a rather useless part of the productive community when there were no wars. As wars grew less frequent, the Englishman learned in time that there were other ways in which he could be exceedingly useful to king and coimtry. It was a most fortunate thing for the colonies that so large a proportion of their settlers came from the middle and lower classes, from among men who thought it a disgrace and even a sin not to work. For example, the people of New England had the Calvinistic way of estimating idleness, or, to call it by another name, un- 107 Io8 ESTDUSTRIAL HISTORY Cal "nism productiveness. Idleness was Satan's opportunity ; in New therefore it was only right that church members should reason with the weaker brethren who, by their idleness, gave Satan the chance to tempt them. Since crime and idleness went hand in hand, it was only proper that the community should have the right not only to punish crime, but to punish the very beginning of crime. Hence, to the civil law in the colonies, laziness was a crime. Five years after Boston was founded, one of the courts of the colony passed the following order: "It is further ordered that noe person howse houlder or other, shall spend his time idely, or unprofit- ably under paine of such punishment as the Court shall thinke meete to inflicte & for this end it is ordered that the Constable of every place shall use spetiall care & diligence to take knowl- edge of such offenders in this kinde, espetially of comon coasters unprofittable fowlers & Tobacco takers & to present the same to the 2 nexte assistants, whoe shall have power to heare & deter- mine the cause, or if the matter be of importance to transferr it to the Court." The records of this court are full of references to the punishment of persons who were "idle and unprofittable." The Need In ^ world SO full of opportunities the hands of Laborers. q£ (.jjg settlers were all too few for the task before them; so we find that one of the first complaints of the new country was a scarcity of good servants, and one of the first things sought was a supply of cheaply paid labor. Among the first learned Europeans to come to the New World to live was a good clergyman, Jonas Michaelius, who came over in 1628 to take charge of the church in New Amsterdam. His letters home were full of complaints, among which may be noted a reference to certain hard treatment endured at the hands " van eenen seer snooden ende godloosen Cock" (of a very wicked and ungodly cook) 1 He also mentioned the fact that in the THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM lOQ New York of 1628 it was very diflScult to obtain fresh milk and butter, and that it was ahnost impossible to hire help. The first answer to the demand, in point of time, was supplied in 1619, when a Dutch ship disposed of a few surplus slaves to the planters of Virginia. Toward the end of the next year the men of England who came to Plymouth brought with them " bond- servants," or servants who were bound by a legal agreement to work for a term of years under certain conditions. It is an odd fact that these two great systems of labor should have been estab- Ushed in the New World by Europeans at so nearly the same time. Of the two, servant or slave, the servant's lot was infinitely preferable. He was usually known as an j^^ jj^^i^ indentured or indented servant, from the manner of " Ser- in which the contract binding him to service was .> slave." written out. It was usually written in duplicate on a large sheet, and the halves separated by a wavy or jagged cut, called an indent; from the appearance of the contract, then, came the common name of this class of servant. The great difference between the slave and the servant lay in the fact that the slave was bound for life, with no contract to pro- tect his rights, for he really had none to be defended, while the servant was bound only for a term of years, and had certain very weU-defined rights, with stated penalties to be inflicted on those masters who did not observe these rights. The humanity of the master was the slave's only protection. The owner of the servant's time must, however, obey the law, and, in addition, must avoid the reputation of being a cruel master, lest he have difiSculty in engaging the best and most desirable servants. One of the most unpleasant phases of the hfe "i g j t' Old England three or four centuries ago was the in Old way in which the laboring classes were treated, es- "^ "* peciaUy when they were out of work. England was divided no INDUSTRIAL HISTORY i>ni>Atu>nm lire 1 |!.,l'|.Jf...-HV^^-t>, l.l'.'''t .If- +'<■■....-..«.■ ..-f:,>,'(o,■^,;,„> .n .-Mu-L- J.i;,;/,; .„?!J i.v life fiftr, «,»')„,> .■,,,o„>>v.i>'i...''„<-.-f ii.c i.;,^, u,>s.'rfot.-hi.'TV„,*/; A'V». illS.itlJ.'^ ^f--t.'|o!^ ('|..,f,, ,KfKn(i'-?AivS-t^,>-.'.'oV-iM|.'. j.TrAi^i-i-iiiv.i'.oi- I' ..■ft. |..- i:,.,((»-i., <(.v •4. ,r~- .1'' .. 'k^ . s. .■ ^^-,. I.V t(.'.|i..)l.V„Mfti ....■/.' fi",...'^ ..■..w.„'.-..i (I'l^lrV iuH.i-v,,>s..:-,.i,..|'.f,V /^1',~^ s'-i;.-H.i:/.'(o(t' ,'....'ki.-'.-,-..i(,:„,,,' ^ ^ - ■ ■' " ,.>c.i:>... K.ll'lv.„\,-.^J Part of an Indenture. This corner of a large parchment shows the terms on which Lore] Sheffjcld allowed certain men to settle on lands which he claimed near Cape Anne. Notice the curved line, or indent, at the top. The names on the margin are the witnesses, John Bulmer, Tho. Belweeld, John ffowller. (Flora Thoiatojl'5 Landing at Cape Anne.) THE DOMESTIC PROBLEJI into small local divisions known as "parishes." We might say that the lands occupied by the people who supported any impor- tant church made up a parish, and since, from the verj' begin- ning of the Christian church, the care of the poor had been the duty of all Christians, the care of the poor came to be considered the duty of the parish rather than of any other local subdivision of government. It was undoubtedly a very good thing to have a large and carefully organized institution look after the needy classes ; trouble arose when each parish be- came selfishly averse to caring for poor people who really belonged in other parishes. On the assumption, then, that no people but the lower classes were Ukely ever to "come on the parish," laws were made in England, long before the settlement of the New World, forbidding persons of that class to move from one parish to another as freely as would seem right to us. As we to-day study those times, it appears to us that "hard times" came then much more frequently than now, and that there were many more persons always on the verge of starvation than we now find. There were many laws re- stricting a man's right to engage in any trade he pleased. Mild Punishment." A sentence of two hours in the piUory must have been \cr\- se\"ere. In .iddition to the physical torture, the criminal was tlie target for such naissiles as happened to he handy. 112 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY These laws made it impossible for a skilled workman to get employment outside his own line, no matter how badly he might be in need of work. Crime was punished with the utmost severity, too, and there were over three hundred crimes punishable by death. Theft of property to the value of more than six shillings (or two shillings, in some places) brought the death penalty, no matter what the provocation might have been, while lesser crimes were cruelly punished. The result of such savage laws was the execution of many a destitute man who had taken to theft in desperation to provide food for his family. Transoorta- ^^ ^^^ course of the seventeenth and eighteenth tion of centuries in England public opinion on these matters underwent a change. It became evident that the commxmity was robbing itself of many a valuable life by the merciless execution of an unjust law that might once have been valuable, but was no longer needed. The people of the colonies or "plantations," as they were always called in England, were greatly in need of help to develop their natural resources, while so many people of England were in great distress from lack of work. The rich dreaded the great expense of enforcing their "poor laws," and the poor found little but hardship in hfe. Now the people of England have a very great respect for the way in which things have always been done, or, as we say, they are very conservative, and dislike to repeal any law that has stood for a long time on their statute books. They very much prefer to alter the manner of enforcing the law when the public opinion of the time is evidently against the spirit of it. So in order to show mercy to a man arrested for stealing, the prisoner was charged with having stolen property to the value of five shillings eleven pence ; then the judge could sentence him to transpor- tation, and a strong man, who probably was not a criminal by instinct, was saved to perform for the country valuable service THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM I13 in the colonies. Debtors were usually imprisoned imtU their debts were paid, a system that does not seem wise to us at all ; many of these men were the victims of misfortune, and not crim- inals, in our sense of the word, yet under the law of the time they were treated as criminals. Here again humanity suggested transportation to the colonies. Many men who lacked industry or settled habits, or who were prone to wander in defiance of the law, but who had not committed any crime, were classed as "sturdy beggars" ; these also might be sentenced to transporta- tion to the plantations. On the other hand, many men who had made a failure of life in England voluntarily sold to the captain of some ship the right to rent their services in the colonies for a period long enough to pay the expenses of the voyage. This explains in a general way the manner in The which the supply of servants was obtained. The character cost of passage was considerably more than the |* *^^ steerage rates now, and a term of service of perhaps six to eight years was needed to pay the expense. Criminals were often sentenced to seven years, while, as time went on, the terms of those sold fell as low as four years. As the custom of buying indentured servants spread over the plantations, the demand for them led to great abuses in England. Kidnapping men in the seaport towns for the plantation trade became a business, for good money was to be made by the sale of such men. The kidnappers often agreed to cause certain persons to "disappear," for a large price, of course, for there was always the risk that some one might invoke the laws against "man steal- ing " that were in existence, but seldom used. It may be guessed that most of the servants were extremely unskilled, that many of them were entirely unsuitable for the new country, and that the manners and morals of others caused our forefathers much anxiety. A moment's thought will show that out of such a 114 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY miscellaneous lot as the servants were, there must have been many who belonged to the "habitual criminal" class. Yet the great majority of them came over with the intention of U N away, the 23d of this InSant Jamiar/^ from Silas Crifpltt of Burrirefott, Taylor, a Servant Man na- med Jefefh Morrh, by Trade a Taylor, aged about iz Years, of a middle Sta- ture, fwarthy Complexion, light gray Eyes, his Hair clipp'd off, mark'd with a large pit of the Small Pox on one Cheek near his Eye, had on when he went away a good Felt Hat, a ydowifh « Drugget Coat with Plcits behind, an old Orcnbrigs Vcft, two C^nbrigs Shirts, a pair of Leather Breeches handfomely worm'd and flower'd up the Knees, yarn Stockings and good round toc'd Shoes Took with mm a large' pair of Sheers crack'd in one of the Bows, & mark'd with the Word [Sawyl Whoever takes up the faid Servant, and fecurcs him fo that his Mafter may >iavc him again, Aall have 7*r« Peundi Reward befides reafo- nable Charges, paid by me Si/as Gi^m. From a PMUdelpbla newspaper An Eighteenth-century Advertisement. Colonial newspapers abound in sucli advertisements as this, Tiie proportion of servants that ran away was probably very small, for most of them were anxious to rise, and ambition suggested good behavior as the best way to gain the good will of the neighborhood. serving their time as bond servants, and then starting in life for themselves. We must not forget that Europe of the seven- teenth century, and for a long time thereafter, was a land where social and class distinctions were all- powerful. There was almost no chance for the man of low social class to rise, and ambition in a com- moner was a crime rather than a virtue. The symbol of social rank was still the old feudal idea of landownership, and for the Social Possibilities for the Am- bitious Commoner, THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 115 man of low degree to own land was a " consummation devoutly to be wished," but almost impossible of accomplishment. "Family" was the leading influence, as it stUl is in many parts of Europe. In the New World land as a proof of social stand- ing lost its meaning, for there was more land than anything else, and the possession of a strong back and strong hands and arms was of more importance than a, long Hne of noble an- cestors. Hence from the very beginning, America has been known in Europe as the land in which a poor man has the best opportunity. The ambitious young man of the seventeenth century might lack money and position, but if he could seU his services temporarily, and thus get the necessary start in life, he could in time become the "founder of a farmly." Many a family of revolutionary days traced its origin to a servant an- cestor of the previous century. The history of England in the seventeenth century tells of greater changes and promises greater growth ^"slaiia s than does any other century of English history, the Seven- But the wonderful changes brought forth by the century, seventeenth century affected only the better classes. The condition of England's poor was worse at the end of the century than it had been at the beginning, for while wages were larger by a third, the prices of the necessities of hfe had doubled ; the poor laws had been made harsher, and their execution was very severe. If we put ourselves in the place of the poor of three centuries ago, we may see how vividly America must have seemed to them a land of promise. That they did come over in large numbers may be shown by a single set of figures from the history of one colony. In Virginia, in the year 1675, there were about six thousand servants, and probably ten thousand persons who had come over as servants, but who had set up for themselves as soon as their terms of service were over. Il6 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Very few of these men were of what we would call the criminal class, for the protests of colonial authorities and the refusal of colonists to buy such servants put a stop to the sale of criminals. It is true that many were sentenced to transpor- tation, but they formed a small proportion to the whole number of servants. The rights of the servant class were carefully pro- trast°°" tected, and a feeling of self-interest made masters Servants on treat their servants as leniently as possible, espe- tions Well cially after the custom arose of giving servants a "*■ fortnight in which to find purchasers for them selves. During the term of service, the master was bound to provide food, clothing, and shelter, with such other An Eighteenth-centdey Flintlock. For nearly two centuries the flint lock was the weapon with which the great European wars were fought, and with which our ancestors subdued the American wilderness. things as might be necessary, and at the end of the term he was obliged by law to give his servant a partial outfit. The custom in the various colonies did not agree on this point, but it may be said in general that the master gave his servant two complete suits of clothes, and food enough for a year. Sometimes 50 acres of land, a certain amount of money, and a musket with ammunition were included. However, there was much latitude allowed in making contracts (indentures), and masters often promised to give their servants much more than the law demanded, in order to stimulate the servant to greater industry. Servants were allowed to own property, and there were often cases where a servant was able to buy the last part of THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 1 17 his time from his master with what he had accumulated. During the first century of American colonization many thousand serv- ants were brought over, but early in the eighteenth century the number began to decrease, and before the Revolutionary War broke out the importation of servants had ceased entirely. After the war "redemptioners" formed a very considerable class. There were many servants in the colonies who „, •' Slaves and were not white Europeans; Indians, Africans, Servants Turks, and Algerians were held as servants under "^^te-" different conditions, for the colonists made a dis- skinned , , ,,,.,., Christians." tinction between servants who were white-skinned Christians" and those who belonged to some other por- tion of the human race. In addition to these non-Christian servants there were the slaves. This brings us to one of the most famous dates in American history, 1619, the fatal year in which a Dutch captain sailed up the James River and sold to the English planters a few African slaves. The im- portance of this lies in the fact that at the very beginning the essential difference between slave and servant was brought out ; the servant was in subjection for a limited time and had many well-defined and protected rights, while the slave was in ser- vitude for life, and had few or no rights that his owner was bound to respect. Slaves were not popular in Virginia at the beginning; they were even more uncivilized than the Indians, and were hard to tame and train, while the servants were for the most part easy to get along with. Since the contrast be- tween the two classes was so great, it is not to be wondered at that the number of slaves increased very slowly. For at least fifty years the number of slaves was a very small fraction of the number of servants. The reason for this we must look into a little farther. Ii8 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY It is diflSciilt for a free man to realize what the ^^ life of a slave must be : no hope for freedom, ambi- Slavery is an tion a crime, nothing to gain by good conduct or mstaS^" liard labor, no share in the profits of his toH. This means that the slave will work no harder than is necessary to avoid being in his master's bad books. Slavery as an institution has existed throughout the history of man, and it has had these same hard characteristics through the ages, with varying degrees of severity. It took the world many cen- turies to learn that slavery was a great mistake from an economic standpoint. That it was a very expensive form of labor we have many proofs. As a rule, only one crop could be raised under slave labor, and that one was the crop that could be produced with the rudest form of cultivation. The crop varied in dif- ferent regions as climate and soil varied, but in every case there was great danger, for a "one-crop country" is ruined if any- thing happens to its one product. It is the old story of putting all one's eggs in the same basket. No slave, however skillful, would do as much work or do it as well as would a free man, who knew that if he did not do his work well, some other man would get his place. One of the best illustrations of the eco- nomic mistake of slavery is to be found in our own country just before the Civil War. Slave Labor In i^SS, for example, a good field hand cost from Expensive, eight hundred dollars up. Every plantation con- tained many slaves who could not do the work required under the "one-crop system." Slave owners reckoned that about two thirds of the slaves must be considered non-productive, the old men, the children, and many of the women making up this proportion. Slaves were much more likely to be ill than free laborers were, and " soldiering " was common. A slave owner coidd therefore count on only one third of his capital as being THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 1 19 productive of results. It cost the owner about forty dollars a year to provide for each of his slaves food and shelter, clothing and medical attention. Moreover, the value of his capital was constantly diminishing; if a slave remained in first-class con- dition for ten years, his master was fortunate. Slaves were destructive of the tools and animals that they used. A north- ern hoe, weighing only a Httle over a poimd, carefully propor- tioned and finely finished, was a failure in the hands of the slave, and he quickly ruined it. The hoe used by the slaves was almost the same in design as that used in Africa. He used to best advantage a crude instrument weighing ten pounds, with a rough hickory handle. The southern slave never brought the back and arm muscles into activity, as the northern farm laborer was expected to do. His idea of hoeing was to raise the hoe in the air and let it drop, the momentimi of the hoe doing the work. Yet in 1855, when a southern slave owner hired out his "hands" for agricultural work, he received twelve dollars a month for their work, while in New York one could hire much better free farm laborers for ten dollars a month and board, the laborer clothing himself and bearing the expense of his illnesses. It will be seen by this comparison that really slave labor was far more expensive than free labor. By the time Columbus discovered the New £„,. g World western Europe had learned the lesson pretty learned , , . . , , . the Lesson. well, that the cheapest labor is the most expensive. This does not mean that all people knew it, but that the lead- ers in social and commercial life recognized the fact from their own experience with slavery. We have now to see how the same process was repeated in America. We know that the first use of slaves in the United The Slave States was in the tobacco fields of Virginia. They j^^^^^^ were not a pronounced success, for the tobacco Field. 120 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY plant required tender care from the very first processes of planting and transplanting to the final packing in casks for shipment to England. Much judgment and great care must be exercised in order to keep from damaging the product, and a damaged crop was worth almost nothing. Consider- ing all the risks of the crop, it is not strange that the margin between profit and loss was very narrow, and it is equally plain that so careless and slothful a laborer as the slave would not be practicable, except under the very best conditions. The best conditions existed in the early history of the colony, when there was an abundance of fertile land that needed no fertiliz- ing. But tobacco is an exhausting crop, and it is unfortunately true that under slave conditions no crop can be raised that requires careful fertilizing and intensive agricultural methods. In early times in Virginia land was so cheap that it was a simple matter to abandon one's land and to move a little farther on, where the same process of first exhausting the new soil and then moving on again was repeated. However, at the time of the Revolutionary War the land in Virginia was so far exhausted that the leading men of that state, such men as Washington, Jefferson, Mason, and Randolph, looked on slavery as a dying institution. In the colonies south of Virginia different crops Slave Labor ° ^ and Various were raised. In North Carolina the production of Crops in the jjg^y^j stores was the great industry. Like tobacco raising, this was a wasteful industry at best, leaving the ground in an almost barren condition, but when carried on under slave conditions, it was far more wasteful than was neces- sary. It was not as easy to supervise the gathering of the sap of the pitch pine as it was to watch the raising of field crops, and the naturally lazy slave had a better chance to neglect this work. In South Carolina the two great crops before 1789 were rice THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 121 and indigo. The former was raised along a narrow belt of land on the coast, above salt water, yet low enough down- stream to get the fresh water backed up by the rising of the tide. This, unfortunately, was the most unhealthful part of the whole region; so bad, in fact, that the whites were prac- tically obliged to abandon it for the three hottest months of the year. It goes without saying that the loss of sbA'es under such conditions was great, although the slaves were not as A South Carolina Rice Swamp. Compare rice culture in tiie Piiilippines, in Japan, in China and in tiie East Indies with the processes used in the United States. badJy affected by the climate as were their owners. About 1790 Thomas Jefferson introduced the use of upland rice, an improvement that worked a change for the better in the life of the South. The production of indigo was a more deUcate process even than the preparation of tobacco. The raising of the plant was not very difficult, but in the process of extracting the coloring matter there was need of the most untiring attention and of the greatest experience and judgment. The least carelessness made the product off-color and unsalable. Slave labor was not 122 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY adapted to such an industry, even under otherwise favorable conditions. Unfortunately for the industry, just after the Revolutionary War an insect pest made its appearance in the fields, and caused such havoc that the profits of the crop were lost. The third great southern crop was cotton, but the history of that industry is a topic to be treated at length. Slaves and With the first settlements in Virginia and the Cotton. Carolinas the culture of cotton had been attempted, in common with a good many other things, for the projectors of those colonies had no idea of a "one-crop system" such as slavery afterwards made inevitable, and wished the colonists to provide a great variety of commodities for the export trade. But in both cases crops were found so profitable that the plan- tation owners turned their attention to them entirely, tobacco in Virginia and rice in South Carolina. There were several other reasons why cotton was not cultivated as much as other crops. There was the necessity of creating a demand for the product, the difiiculty of overcoming government?! opposition, and the hostility of the great moneyed interests of England. One of the most important reasons for the very limited culti- vation of cotton was the difiicult process necessary to prepare cotton for the market after it was gathered. When the cotton is ready to be picked, the "bolls" or pods break open and the cotton appears in a beautiful fluffy mass that seems to consist of a great many little balls of cotton, each with a hard center. This hard center is the seed, and the separation of the seeds from the fiber was, in the days before the invention of the cotton gin, a long task, monotonous, and much disUked by the slaves, hence sure to be badly done. It was then necessary to compress it into a bale of convenient size and weight before it could be exported. The preparation of cotton for the market was, under slave THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 1 23 conditions, so expensive a process that naturally there was very little cotton cultivated, and that little under the cheapest pos- sible conditions of production. This was a repetition of the wasteful process of exhausting the soU, as we saw in the case of Virginia, and was due to the large supply of good land -and to the ease and cheapness with which it could be taken up. How- ever, cotton did not exhaust the land nearly as fast as tobacco, nor was it so delicate a crop ; hence it was much better suited to the conditions of slave labor than was tobacco. Except for the prohibitive expense of the cleaning process, cotton would have been the leading crop of the South long before the break- ing out of the Revolutionary War. The industry had to wait until the invention of a machine able to do the work of cleaning quickly, cheaply, and thoroughly, before it could become of m.y importance. We have seen that down to 1775 slavery in the South had never been much of a success, yet in spite ^yj*^jj of that, it had in a way fastened itself on that part not rid of the country, and it was no easier to get rid of it slavery, than it is for a person to rid himself of a bad habit. Most of the slaveholders had a large proportion of their cap- ital invested in their slaves, and very little of it in land, and they found themselves tied to a system of agriculture from which it seemed impossible to get away. The process of the natural disappearance of slavery to which the leaders looked forward was necessarily very slow. Then came the Revolu- tionary War, with its "dislocation of industry," but more espe- cially its dislocation of commerce. The southern part of our country has always been too dependent on the manufactured products of other parts of the world, and the war probably had a more deadening effect on the South than on the more energetic North. Then the slaves had to be reckoned with, whether sla- 124 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY very was profitable or not, and when the plans for the new and stronger government of the United States were being made, there arose the embarrassing question as to what was the legal status of the slaves. Never before in the history of the country had it been found necessary to come to any definite agreement on this delicate question, and it proved a most vexatious one. What was a No one could tell exactly what a slave was in "Slave"? a legal sense; was the slave a person ? If he was, how could he also be property ? As he certainly was held to be property, how could he be a person ? It was a most embarrass- ing question to handle because so much depended on the way in which it was answered. The country was too young to have any court decisions of its own to help it in settling the matter ; the makers of the Constitution must do the best they could and trust that the future would show that they had acted wisely. If the slave was property, he was capable of being taxed, but if be were property, could he be represented in Congress ? When in 1787 the delegates to the Constitutional Convention came to discuss this part of the question, they immediately took sides on two issues. Those from eight states that were then or would soon become free states opposed those from five states that would probably remain slave states. These five were Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. There was also a division into smaller and larger states, the former very jealous of the latter. In 1787 the largest state was Virginia, with a total population of a little over half a million, of which more than half were negroes, while the next two states in point of population were Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, which together had about seven hundred thousand persons. The small states realized that the large states would get all the power if the representation was based on population. The slave states had the same fear of the free states, for the latter THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 125 had one sixth more people than the slave states, counting all inhabitants without distinction as to color. If the South counted out its slaves, the North contained a third more per- sons than did the South ! How, then, could the South hope for power when hopelessly outvoted by the North ? As far as the small states were concerned, they could do httle against the large states, except block legislation started by the large states. All men felt a closer union to be all-important, for although each party felt strongly the righteousness of its own cause, each wanted union badly enough to be willing to give in a httle to the other. So both of these questions were compromised. The question of representation was settled by deciding that of the two branches of the national congress, the upper house should represent the states regardless of their size, while the lower should represent the people of the states, each state having representatives in proportion to its population. But it was not so easy to compromise the question of slavery. In the American mind representation and taxa- Slayery tion went together ; if the South wished a larger in the proportionate representation, it must submit to a Constitu- larger taxation. Part of the difficulty was settled by an agreement known as the "federal ratio," in accordance with which three fifths of the slaves were to be counted as white persons in reckoning the number of representatives that each state was entitled to receive. It is an interesting fact that in no place does the Constitution of the United States mention the word "slave," but refers to that class as "any other persons." The rest of the vexed question had to do with the slave trade. The southern planter usually found that all his ^^^^ ^^^ capital was required for the keeping up of his plan- Responsible tation, and the constant restocking of slaves left slave him with little surplus for any outside trading. The Trade? 126 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY business of buying slaves required much capital, for there was no credit system on the African shore. Here the good people of New England found profitable use for some of their capital, for the profits were indeed very large. It cost not more than fifty dollars to deliver a slave at Charleston, South Carolina, and the selling price in 1800 was about four times that figure. There were few kinds of business in which so large a return on the capital was to be obtained. Since the slave-importing trade required ready capital, and since the North was the only part of the country having capital to spare, the moral responsibility of the slave trade must be laid at the door of the people of New England. Of the wealthy men who furnished capital for the They saw Nothing slave trade one of the best known was Mr. Peter Wrong in Faneuil, who lived in Boston during the early part of the eighteenth century. He was of that Hugue- not descent that gave Paul Revere and many another man of worth to the country. Of the many kinds of commerce that brought profits to him one was the slave trade. His ships carried to the African shore the rum distilled from West In- dian molasses, and it was there exchanged for the gold dust and negroes of the Gold Coast. For the slaves the voyage to the New World must have been a terrible change from the wild, free life of their African home, although the officers of the ship did all in their power to land their human cargo in the best possible condition. If a large number died on the voyage, the profits of all concerned were very much lessened, and if, when the ship reached the West Indies, the cargo contained many sickly looking negroes, enfeebled by harsh treatment or disease, the whole cargo was likely to sell for a lower average price. So the economical custom arose of sorting out all the sickly slaves during the last days of the voyage, and throwing THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 1 27 them overboard as they covered the last miles of the "Middle Passage." The best excuse that can be given for the New Eng- land capitalists who financed the slave trade is that they never saw the actual operation of their money-making scheme, and did not realize the full horror of it. So Peter Faneuil sent out his Jolly Bachelor, never the sadder for the untold human misery suffered aboard the slave ship. He was a philanthropist in his way, for he saw that the prosperity of Boston needed two things, a better market than it had and a convenient hall large enough for the public meetings of the town of Boston. So in 1742 was completed the building called after its donor Faneuil HaU ("Fun- nel" HaU, as the people of his day pronounced the name), a build- ing with a haU above, supported on brick arches, among which were the stalls of the market men. In the days before the Revolution so many public meetings were held in this hall that it came to be called, very appropriately, the "Cradle of Liberty." Few things in this world are wholly good or wholly bad, so when we are reminded that "the cradle of liberty rocks on the bones of the Middle Passage," we must remember that ideas of right and wrong change with the age, and that Peter Faneuil and his successors are not to be unduly blamed because their ideas of right do not agree with ours. Probably the delegates to the Constitutional Convention were acquainted with many of the compromise abuses that attended the slave trade, and they felt, *" *e Constitutioii no doubt, that the traffic needed regulation of some over the sort. There were practical objections to the slave ~*Y trade, too. If an unlimited importation of slaves - was allowed, the price would be certain to fall, and Ameripans who made a business of raising slaves would suffer financially; Slaves brought directly from Africa were likely to be hard to manage ; slave insurrections were always a very preseijt fear; 128 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY in the minds of slave owners, and a body of slaves, among whom many were fresh importations, would be much more to be feared on this account than slaves born and trained on the plantations. Again, slaves brought fresh from Africa must be- come acclimated, a process that took at least two years. It was the hopelessness of their position that made this process so long ; indeed many of them did not survive this tedious period of weakness of body and spirits, but died of homesickness. Recent importations were likely to bring with them African diseases or fevers contracted on shipboard, and any one who bought such slaves ran the risk of an epidemic of some sort on his plantation. The majority of southerners wished to stop the slave trade entirely, but a few wished to keep the doors open ; this small party found allies in those delegates who feared that the federal government might become too strong. So it was agreed that for twenty years the matter of the slave trade should be left to the regulation of the states, with the single proviso that Congress might, if it pleased, levy an import tax of ten dollars per head on all slaves or persons of color imported. The exact words of the Constitution are: "The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each person." Here again we find that "slave" or "slavery" or "slave trade" are not used in the Constitution. We may dismiss the import tax part of this paragraph with the statement that such a tax was never levied, although several attempts were made to pass such a law. How this One of the most awful events in the history of the woSed* to ^* New World was the terrible slave insurrection in the Practice. island of Santo Domingo (Haiti) in 1791. The THE DOMESTIC PROBLEM 1 29 slaveholders of the South had always the fear of such an uprising before their eyes, and the accounts of the trouble on the island made them very suspicious of aU imported slaves. Hence we find that, although the southern states were very much in favor of "states' rights," they fell in with the spirit of the Constitution and passed laws forbidding the importa- tion of slaves. In 1793 came the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, and within a very few years the situation in the South was en- tirely changed. Before 1793 practically all the cotton raised was in the tidewater region, where the "long-staple" variety was grown. This was not suited to the fertile uplands of the inte- rior, or to the river valleys farther west, and the "short-staple" cotton, the only variety that would grow under such condi- tions, was shut out of the market by the dif&culty of cleaning it of its seeds. This difficulty was entirely overcome by the new machine, thus making slave labor possible over a vast area where before it had been of little use. When fourteen of the twenty years imposed by the Constitution had passed, the pur- chase of Louisiana caused a widening of the market for slaves. A large business in smuggling slaves had existed in the South for many years. There had been no national law against the importation of slaves, and if men chose to violate the state laws forbidding it, there was little legal machinery to interfere with the traffic. These facts combined to cause the people of South Carolina to repeal their law against the slave trade in 1804, so that for four years the business was legal in that state. In 1808 Congress, acting within its rights, as stated in the Con- stitution, passed a law making slave trade a crime and imposing severe penalties on those who violated the law. The invention of the cotton gin divides the history of slavery into two sections, so different from each other that they present I30 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY almost entirely different questions. The modern development of slavery and of the slave trade in the United States belongs in a later chapter. This chapter shows that since the days of the Norsemen America has always been the land of unlimited op- portunity to those who believe and practice the gospel of hard, honest work. To such men America has offered a home and a name. Two systems of servile labor existed side by side in our country, a bond and a free. For nearly a century and a half bond servants were of two classes, the slaves and the in- dentured servants. We find that the servants disappeared as a class before the Revolution, having seized gladly the oppor- tunity that America offered them to better their condition. The slave came here, however, not of his own free will, but as the result of a great injustice. Slavery was being outgrown by the civilized world, and the attempt to introduce it into the New World could hardly end in anything but disaster. CHAPTER VI Agriculture One of the most fascinatine puzzles in the world . . . Agriculture is the mysterious process of development that we among the find in the life story of a plant. Its whole develop- '"*^' ment, from seed to fruit, may be studied imder the micro- scope, and the more closely we examine this development, the more wonderful appear the processes always going on in the plant world. The most wonderful thing about a plant is the way in which it adapts itself to all sorts of climatic conditions. It is really this "adaptability" to which we refer when we say that a plant "responds" easily to cultivation, under which it changes so that it would hardly be recognized. It is difi&cult to reaUze that before the Europeans came to this continent, this changing of plants from a wild state to an improved cultivated form had been going on for a very long time. How long this period was, we do not know, but it must have been many hundreds of years. Probably the Indians were at first a wandering people, having neither flocks, herds, nor farms, living on such beasts, birds, and fishes as they could catch, and on such vegetables as they found ready to their hands. A long, slow development, covering cen- turies of time, is necessary to change a wild people into a race as civilized even as the Indians were at the beginning of Euro- pean settlements. We are accustomed to think of the North Ameri- How can Indians of the seventeenth century as uncivi- "^'^^^^ ■^ were the lized men, "inconstant salvages," Captain John Indians? 131 tT,i INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Smith called them, bloodthirsty, revengeful, deceitful and treacherous in war, delighting to torture their enemies to death, and more or less unscrupulous in their daily affairs. But when we study the people of Europe of the same period, we find, to our chagrin, that the North American Indian was no worse than his white brother in any of these particulars. The European had more knowledge with which to work, and yet in wars, witchcraft excitement, and religious persecutions he sur- passed the Indian in savagery. Though the Indians had no cows, sheep, or horses, they had progressed so far in civilization that most of the tribes had settled homes and cultivated fields of large size. They were accustomed to clear the land by burn- ing, and they had even learned to fertilize the land already cleared in order to increase its yield. This was true of the coast tribes, as well as their stronger cousins of the interior, who had progressed even farther. The "long houses" and the cleared fields of the Iroquois were a wonder constantly mentioned by those Europeans who described the valley of the Mohawk. It is very probable that at first the Indians were cultivated accustomed to use such food as the earth itself by the supplied, and that later the idea of making the earth Indians. i j. ^ o supply more and better food came to the race as it advanced from a wandering people to one fairly well settled. One of the earliest and best sources of information that we have concerning the condition of the Indians in the early seventeenth century is the writing of Captain John Smith. He speaks of the Virginia Indians as using walnuts, chestnuts, plums, cherries, crab apples, acorns, grapes, and various kinds of berries. Many herbs were also used, some as medicines, others as "greens"; roots of various kinds were found in the woods and marshes, but most of these had to be prepared before they could be eaten. Wild peas and currants were found on the hills back from the AGRICtfLTURE 133 coast, and little onions "not past the bignesse of the toppe of ones Thumbe" were to be found in the lowlands. Two other natural products appropriated by the English were "pelUtory of Spain," used as a cure for toothache, and "sasafrage," looked upon by the doctors of that time as a cure-all. Another native herb was destined to have great influence on the development of the continent. This was tobacco, which grew wild all along the coast from southern Brazil to Massachusetts, and which was used by the Indians in much the same way as it was later used by the Europeans, although it was left for the Europeans to cultivate it. It is interesting to note that Columbus dis- covered the use of tobacco within a few days of his before the landing in the New World, and that he was con- European ° ' Settlement. stantly finding it in use among the people of the islands that he explored. It was introduced into Europe within half a century, but the use of it did not immediately become general ; many of the earliest explorers seem to have been ig- norant of its use, its appearance, its taste, and its effects. The first European explorer of North America to give any full ac- count of tobacco was Jacques Cartier, who wrote a description of it as he saw it in 1535. (See Purchas His Pilgrims.) "They [the Canadian Indians] digge their grounds with cer- taine peeces of wood, as bigge as half a sword, on which ground groweth their come, which they call Ofl&ci : it is as bigge as our small peason : there is great quantitie of it growing in Bresill. They have also great store of Muskemilions, Pompions, Gourds, Cucimibers, Peason and Beanes of every color, yet differing from ours. There groweth also a certain kind of herbe, whereof in Sommer they make great provision for all the yeere, making great account of it, and onely men use of it, and first they cause it to be dried ui the sunne, then weare it about their neckes 134 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY wrapped in a little beasts skinne made of a little bagge, with a hollow peece of stone or wood like a pipe : then when they please they make ponder of it, and then put it in one of the ends of the said Cornet or pipe, and laying a cole of fire upon it, at the other end sucke so long, that they fill their bodies full of smoke, till that it commeth out of their mouth and nostrils, even as out of the Tonnel of a chimney. They say that this doth keepe them warme and in health : they never goe without some of it about them. We our selves have tryed the same smoke, and having put it into our mouthes, it seemed almost as hot as Pepper." Even as late as 1588 Thomas Hariot described tobacco in Virginia as though he had just heard of it, although he cer- tainly was one of the best informed men of his time. " There is an herbe which is sowed a part by it self & is called by the inhabitants uppowoc : In the West Indies it hath divers names, according to the severall places & countries where it groweth and is used: The Spaniardes generally call it Tobacco. The leaves thereof being dried and brought into powder : they use to take the fume or smoke thereof by sucking it through pipes made of claie into their stomacke and heade; from whence it purgeth superfluous steame and other grosse humors, openeth all the pores & passages of the body : by which meanes the use thereof, not only preserveth the body from obstructions : but also if any be, so that they have not beene of too long continuance, in short time breaketh them : wherby their bodies are notably preserved in health & know not many greevous diseases where- withall wee in England are oftentimes afflicted. . . . We our selves during the time we were there used to suck it after their maner, as also since our returne, & have found manie rare and wonderful experiments of the vertues thereof ; of which the rela- tion woulde require a volume by it self : the use of it by so manie AGRICULTURE 135 of late, men & women of great calling as else, and some learned Phisitions also, is sufficient witness." Yet by 1604 English- men, sailing along the New England coast, found tobacco every- where, and commented on its use, contrasting the size of the Indian pipes with the pipes sold in England. Tobacco evi- dently became fashionable quite quickly after that, for we learn that in 1 6 10 tobacco to the value of a million and a half dollars was imported into England. The Englishmen who came first to this conti- Indian nent had been accustomed to use as food various ''°™- kinds of grain, such as wheat or barley, and they spoke of all grain as "com." In the King James version of the Bible grain is generally referred to as com. So when the English foimd the Indians using for food a seed somewhat similar to their own foodstuff, it was natural for the word "corn" to be used to describe it, although what they saw was really quite unlike the European corn. Thomas Hariot thus describes it: "Pagatowr, a kinde of graine so called by the inhabitants ; the same in the West Indies is called Mayze; Englishmen call it Guinney wheate or Turkie Wheate, according to the names of the coxm- treys from whence the like hath beene brought. The graine is about the bignesse of our ordinary English peaze and not much different in forme and shape : but of divers colours : some white, some red, some yeUow, and some blew. All of them yeelde a very white and sweete flowr : beeing used according to his kind it maketh a very good bread. Wee made of the same in the country some mault, whereof was brued as good ale as was to be desired. So likewise by the help of hops thereof may bee made as good Beere. It is a graine of marvellous great increase ; of a thousand, fifteene hundred and some two thousand fold. There are three sortes, of which two are ripe in an eleven and twelve weekes at the most: sometimes in ten, after the time 136 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY they are set, and are then in height in stalke about sixe or seven foote. The other sort is ripe in fourteene, and is about ten foote high, of the stalkes some beare foure heads, some three, some one, and two: every head containing five, sixe, or seven hundred graines within a fewe more or lesse. Of these graines besides bread, the inhabitants make victuall eyther by parching them ; or seething them whole untill they be broken; or boyling the floure with water into a pappe." The Indians were evidently accustomed to raise this grain in large quantities, for we find records of many cases where the Indians were able to sell corn to the English by the thousand bushels. Smith records one corn- field in Virginia of about two hundred acres, but the fields were usually smaller, and scattered along the river valleys. The description of the farming of the Virginia Indians, given by Cap- tain John Smith, shows that they had a fairly good system of planting. "The greatest labour they take, is in the planting their corne, for the Country naturally is overgrowne with wood. To prepare the ground they bruize the bark of the trees neare the root, then do they scortch the roots with fire that they grow no more. The nexte year, with a crooked peece of wood they beat up the weeds by the rootes, and in that mould they plant their Corne. Their manner is this. They make a hole in the earth with a sticke and into it they put foure graines of wheate and two of beanes. These holes they make foure foote one from another : Thier women and children do contin- ually keepe it with weeding, and when it is growne middle high, they hill it about like a hop-yard. " In Aprill they begin to plant, but their chief plantation is in May, and so they continue till the midst of June. What they plant in April they reap in August, for May in September, for June in October; Every stalke of their Corne commonly beareth two ears, some three, seldome any foure, many but AGRICULTURE 137 3lK.s^r-^#^: New England The Famous Captain' Johx Smith and his loually Famous :Map. This section of the map contains most of tlie Englisli names placed upon it by Prince Charles (afterwards King Charles I). It is the first map of any portion of the coast that was at all accurate. (1616.) 138 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY one, and some none. Every eare ordinarily hath between 200 and 500 graines. ... In May also among their come they plant Pumpeons, and a fruite like unto a muske mellon, but lesse and worse, which they call Macocks. These increase exceedingly, and ripen in the beginning of July, and continue until Septem- ber. They plant also Maracocks, a wild fruit like a Lemmon, which also increase infinitely. . . . When all their fruits be gathered, little els they plant, and this is done by their women and children ; neither doth this long suffice them, for near three parts of the yeare, they onely observe times and seasons, and live of what the Country naturally afifordeth from hand to rnouth, &c." pjjpj From the start all the colonies were thrown on for the their own resources for food, although they seemed to expect that supplies would be sent them from home. In Massachusetts and Virginia the colonists found it easier to adopt the great food crop of the- Indians than to try to get European seeds to grow here. This latter process would take some years, at least, and they must have food immediately. At first they used the Indian method of raising corn, and in many places they adopted the Indian manner of planting. We read in the writings of Governor William Bradford of Plymouth, that " the women now wente willingly into the ye feild, and tooke their little-ones with them to set come." But the greater abil- ity of the Englishman, both as a farmer and as a business man, soon enabled him to outdistance the Indian. In 1630 the Rev. Stephen Higginson of Salem published an account of that colony, in which these words occur: "In our plantation we have already a quart of Milke for a penny: but the aboun- dant encrease of Corne proves this Countrey to be a wonderment. Thirtie, fortie fiftie, sixtie are ordinary here: yea Josephs encrease in Aegypt is out-stript here with us. Our Planters hope to have more than a hundred fould this yere : and all this AGRICULTURE 139 while I am within Compasse ; what will you say of two hundred fould and upwards ? It is almost incredible what great gaine some of our English planters have had by our Indian Come. Credible persons have assured me, and the partie himselfe avouched the truth of it to me, that of the setting of 13 gallons of Come he hath had encrease of it 52 Hogsheads, everie hogs- head containing seven bushels London measure, and everie bushel was by him sold and trusted to the Indians for so much Beaver as was worth 18 shillings ; and so of these 13 gallons of Come which was worth 6 shillings 8 pence, he made about 327 poimds of it the yeere following, as by reckoning wUl appeare : where you may see how God blesseth husbandry in this land." This means a gain of about sixty-five hundred dollars on an investment of about six dollars and a half ! The reverend divine evidently believed that as the Philistines were delivered over to the chosen people to be "spoiled," so the Indian was pro- vided by Providence in order that the New England Puritan might gain the advantage over him. One of the important foods of the Indians of Qr^er North America was the combination of corn and Colonial beans, described by Captain John Smith. These two articles of food were not only raised together, but they were cooked together and eaten as succotash. The corn cooked alone resembled hulled corn, and was called "samp." The beans were cooked in several ways, but the method most imitated by the colonists seems to have been that of baking them in a large earthenware pan. There were various ways of cooking corn meal. It was sometimes boiled as hominy or suppawn, and sometimes baked in the form of "pones." This shows that our forefathers had discovered early in colonial days that corn was one of nature's best foods, and evidently they regarded it as the mainstay of life in the new land. I40 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY The colonists l^rought with them the seeds of many Enghsh vegetal)les and fruits, and after long experiment with the new climate and soil, they found that many of these croi)s grew even ixtter in the \ irgin soil of the new home than in that of Old England. This was true particularly of apples, mek)ns, peaches, potatoes, and peas. Wheat and other English grains were raisetl to some extent, but the soil and climate were not fitted 'f-*<.V«-. : ^i^^M V N \ In 1 \mi) Jill I II L The owner li;i5 tricil to get ri'l of [urt of the -.loiie, liy liull'liriL; ^l.one wiills, l.ut Ihere -.eems to [je II never failing supply of new m.iteri.Lt. I'drmiiig in soil like this c:Ln yiehl no more tlian a bare living. for them. It must be remembered that the range of climate in the settlements froin Georgia to Maine gave opportunity for a far greater variety of fruit and vegetables than it was possible to raise in England, and these differences of climate, soil, and rainfall had a very great influence on the development ot the country. An extract from the diary of Judge Samuel Sewall discloses, not only some popular viands, l)ut also the happy combination of piety and enjoyment of good things that was characteristic AGRICULTURE 141 of the Puritan Xew Englander. "Sixth-day, Oct. i. 1697. Jer. Balchar's sons came for us to go to the island. !My Wife, through Indisposition, could not goe : But I carried Sam. Hanah, Elisa, Joseph, ]\Iary and Jane Tapan : I pre\-aird with i\Ir. Willard to goe, He carried Simon, EUsabeth, ^^'ilham, ^Margaret, and Ehsa Tyng : Had a very comfortalile Passage thither and home again ; though against Tide ; Had first A \A'AsnTXGTnX HlTLsIDE. Compire this soil with that in tlie picture on the o[:.p.:>>ite piL:e Tlie boLimile^^ fiel U make f«>s;ihle the u>e ol f.irm machinery on a large icale, while ~oil anil climate are lavorable for the production of wheat. Butter, Hone}-, Curds and Cream. For Diner, very good Rost Lamb, Turkey, Fowls, Aplepy. After Diner sung the 121 Psalm. Note. A Glass of spirits my Wife sent stood upon a Joint-Stool which, Simon W. jogging, it fell down and broke all to shivers : I said twas a iiA^eh" Emblem of our Fragility and Mortality. When came home met Capt. Scottow led between two: He came to ^isit me and fell down and hurt himself; bruis'd his Xose, within a little of our House." 142 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY In contrast to the fertility of the Southern Colo- The Effect .... of Farming nies New England had a hard, stony sou, requiring Posdbmties j^^ j,^j.g ^jj(j ^^j.^ jg^^Qj. before any great crop on History. ° j a ± could be raised. The winter was long and severe, and for at least six months of the year the farmer could do nothing with his stony fields. Spring was short, giv- ing little time in which to prepare for the cropS ; the summer was short and very hot, forcing the severest labor in the time of the greatest heat, and making it necessary to raise only such crops as would ripen in a short season. Frosts came early, and the corn, grapes, melons, and pumpkins must be of a sort that would come to maturity and could be harvested before the end of September. Had it not been for their English custom of eating much vegetable food, the colonists would have relied upon the well-stocked forest and the sea for their sustenance. And indeed it is surprising that the people of the Northern Colonies engaged entirely in agriculture, since the abundance of natural resources of many kinds invited them to follow many different kinds of occupations. Moreover very little money was paid out by the farmers for labor, and the general employment of slave labor was entirely out of the question. Hence the New Englander came to be a very industrious man, doing his own work, able to do many things well, and ingenious in all of them; in short, a "Yankee." It is interesting to note that nearly all of the Revolutionary monuments represent workers. In the Southern Colonies conditions were different. The soil, the colonists found, was wonderfully fertile, and there seemed to be an inexhaustible supply of it. With plenty of sunlight, enough water, a long summer, and several suitable and profit- able crops agriculture seemed the natural occupation in the Southern Colonies. The social conditions and the climate, however, were unfavorable to such a state of activity, for the AGRICULTURE 143 E 1 144 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY colonists were not from a class of Englishmen accustomed to work with their hands, and the hot climate made them even less inclined to labor in the fields. Hence the fate of the South depended on a plentiful supply of imported labor. This was furnished at first by the indentured servants. We have already seen that in time they were supplanted by the slaves, and we have seen how slave labor degraded the condition and the agri- cultural methods of the southern planters. Later we shall see how the labor question in the South helped to bring on the Civil War. It will be remembered that Great Britain expected Policy" ^ much of her colonists; they were to be obedient regarding and humble, and should not be above receiving Agriculture, orders as to what they should do, and among other things as to what they, should raise. Many Eng- lishmen believed that England should spend no money outside her own borders, and that, whatever she could not produce herself, her colonies ought to raise and send to her. The colonies ought not to raise what the mother country herself could raise and send to them, and it would be convenient for the colonies to raise and send home such things as were in demand in Europe. Great Britain could reexport these products and so make a "middleman's" profit, for not only was it held that England must refrain from spending money, but that she should try to get as much away from her neighbors as possible. This idea, known as the " British colonial theory," guided Great Britain in her treatment of her colonies, down to the time of the Revolution. Inevitably such a policy led to much hard feeling and mis- understanding. During the early days in Virginia, when hunger and sickness were much more abundant than gold and; silver, those in authority in England were trj^ing to induce the- AGRICULTURE 145 colonists to produce and send to England such commodities as Europeans had been accustomed to buy abroad, commodities such as silk, glass, naval stores, the precious metals, and medi- cal supplies. Except for a few feeble efiforts this demand from the mother country remained entirely unnoticed by the colonists. It seems as though some mysterious natural law impelled all the colonies alike to raise or produce the things best suited to the soil and climate of their locality, something easily produced with the small amount of labor at hand, and something for which there was a demand. Let us see what result this had on the life and development of some of the colonies. We take up this topic first because there is no _, . ^ ^ Tobacco in better example in our history of the effects of a Virginia vegetable product on the fortunes of a state. '^ °^^' Throughout the whole colonial period there were occasional attempts to turn the people of Virginia to the culture of some other crop, but these were all complete failures. The growing of flax was tried; sUkworm culture was at times attempted to some extent ; peaches were raised, but could be used for noth- ing except to fatten hogs; maize was grown as a food crop, but not in suiBcient quantities to sell ; in short, all these were abandoned for tobacco, because this was best suited to the particular conditions of soU, climate, and labor found in the colony of Virginia. The British government assumed different attitudes toward tobacco raising as the time passed. James I thought it a filthy weed, and even wrote a book against it, A Counterblast to Tobacco, and did his best to discourage cul- tivation of it. By 1660 the British colonial theory was gaining vigor. Theoretically the British government should have pre- vented the colonists from putting all their eggs in one basket, but the crown obtained so large an income from the various duties on tobacco in England that objections had little weight. 146 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Although the taxes were not heavy, the large amount that the government realized from this source may be imagined from the fact that by 1689 the colony was sending about eight thousand tons of tobacco to England yearly, and various government taxes on tobacco brought in hundreds of thousands of pounds. Moreover, many influential British merchants were obtaining a large income from manufacturing and selling the leaf. The tobacco raiser had a very small share in the profits of the trade. Down to 1660 the British government had tried Colonists to keep a strict control over Virginia tobacco rais- regarded jng^ a^^jj ji^fj succeeded only in arousing indignation, Restriction. , . , , . and in making the colonists regard the government as a busybody that was always bothering others whiie unable to keep its own business in good order. In 1660 new life was given to the friction between colony and mother country by the passage in the British Parliament of a law known as the "Navi- gation Act," because it had to do with goods imported into England or into her colonies, and with the exporting of such goods. One of the provisions of this act was that certain goods produced in the colonies (known as "enumerated goods") should be sent only to England, and that they must be sent in ships owned and manned by the English. This was to give the government, merchants, and sailors of England the sole privilege of making money from certain American crops, and unfortunately tobacco was one of the enumerated commodities. How much the English made may be estimated from the fact that when tobacco was selling for a penny a pound in Virginia, it sold for fivepence in England. Of course this was a great hardship for the Virginians, as it prevented them from sell- ing their produce in the best market, and it really compelled them to take whatever price the English merchants chose to give them. When tobacco was worth only a penny a pound AGRICULTURE 147 ' tr. -T3 C u ) ■ u < -— .C' n: S3 Z; L^ ^ Z5 ^-" u i_\ Cki =.<= 2 - " uL S 1^ K ° S'^^ n a^t: i:!^-^ >_t-' S "1= as '**' o ";^ ii rS '^ ^ -" O ?a. ^,— CJ ^SB|Q 3 9 2 § 5 S,c.fe) 2 - I &C?t>iic5 "iSe^SC-t- . ":i .0 t5 rj =/-i=-='3 = " — r_ ■ ®Hyj 148 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY in Virginia, it hardly paid to harvest it. They knew that they could often get four times the English price if they were willing to violate the law and to send their tobacco to Holland or some other continental country. In their distress they often tried to cheat the government officers, and undoubtedly they did sell great amounts in illegal ways, but they were justified in their own eyes by the great injustice of the law. It was a very un- fortunate thing for England that so early in the life of this colony, destined to be the most important and influential in 1776, its people should have had so thoroughly inculcated in their minds the idea of the injustice of the British government. The price of tobacco in Virginia was usually low, Life of the and it sometimes happened that it cost more to raise ColoS'fts ^^ ^^^^ ^^^ ''^°P brought. It is true that this was was often the fault of the people themselves, for they had no foresight in the planting of the crop, and each one thought only of how large an amount he might put on the market. But the low price compelled every one to raise his crop as cheaply as he could, and this meant that as little labor as possible should be expended on the land. Land was the cheapest thing in Virginia; men who wished to raise tobacco got into the habit of buying very large tracts of land, thousands of acres, perhaps, — far more than could be cultivated at any one time. This had the effect of scattering the popula- tion; there were no good schools or roads, nor any towns of size, while "Charles City" existed only on the map, and had no population at aUl The methods of cultivation were as follows: at first each planter would clear as much land as he could cultivate at one time, and plant it with tobacco. The land was never thoroughly cultivated, in our sense of the word, but was treated in the rudest manner possible, and the wonderful rich- ness of soil was relied upon to do the work for the planter. AGRICULTURE 149 The best soil could raise only two or at most three crops. After that the return would be too small to cover the expenses of planting and harvesting. Then the planter must begin all over again the process of clearing land and exhausting its fer- tility. Some of the planters used a Uttle of the exhausted land for raising maize or vegetables for a year or two, but with no fertilizer and with half-hearted tillage only two or three crops could be raised in this way. Then the land was abandoned and allowed to grow up, first to coarse grass, then to scrub pine, then in time to forest again. So in the course of a generation, perhaps, the whole area originally taken up by a planter would be exhausted, and his family would move out farther into the wilderness and take up another great area. In this way the available land of the colony was rapidly covered; by 1700 the area taken up in plantations in Virginia was equal to the whole area of cultivated land of England ! The people scattered over this territory had learned to regard the government of England as thoroughly selfish in its treatment of them, and the idea of the evasion of the law had come to have nothing disgraceful about it, for they believed themselves justified in protecting their natural rights in every possible way. At the time of the Revo- lution nearly all the available tobacco lands of the eastern part of the state had been taken up, and the colony was facing a crisis in its affairs. Naturally this did not tend to make the people any less imeasy, or any more inclined to obey laws that appeared to them to be the source of all their woes. It was especially imfortunate that just at the time when men were becoming seriously disturbed over the distressing situation, the English government should attempt to exercise its authority in a new and more distasteful way. One of the commercial grievances of the people of Money in aU the colonies was a lack of ready money. There Virginia. 150 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY m-iwi ■■ lAnfll^^^H 1 •7;,,-., r.'i -M »-r,"tS- 1 STAND /6UR CROUMO 1 '* .OOHT RftEUI4LL3SFlRCDUP?)H ^ ^| ^UT IF THCV MEAN TO HAVg A WAR ^ jH I 1 , 'le;t it becim hfrc ^^V 1^ Pl^ ^^, ■JJB^BB was not enough cash or coined money in existence among them to enable them to do business easily. This lack could easily have been remedied by the British government, had it chosen to do so, and the feeling among the colonists that commercial greatness would be within their grasp if they only had a proper supply of good money kept alive a feeling of bitterness against the government that was responsible for the lack. The people of Virginia were especially bitter on this point, for they had been given a kind of relief that they looked upon as a mockery, as indeed it was. At a time when the govern- ment of Great Britain was un- usually corrupt the colony of Virginia, through its House of Burgesses, appealed to the king to relieve the commercial situa- tion by furnishing the colony with some means of obtaining a supply of small change. The House was delighted when it was informed that its prayer had been answered. What really happened was this : one of the most needy of the courtiers had obtained possession of the petition, and had begged permission to coin shillings contain- ing about 30 per cent of base metal ; these he planned to use in buying tobacco in Virginia, thus distributing the small change that the people so much wanted. This of course amounted to robbery, for the people of the colony would be obliged to accejjt the coins, although they would not be able to use them outside their own colony. The The Line of the Miniite Men, April hj, 1775. This bowlder stands on the Lexington Com- mon; just in line with it, but not seen in this picture, stands the building in which was started the first Normal School in America. The inscription reflects the bitterness of the American belief that the war was the fault of the British government. AGRICULTURE 151 House of Burgesses promptly declined the king's favor, with thanks. There were large warehouses scattered through Virginia, con- trolled by the government, and the planters were obliged to store their tobacco in them, receiving "tobacco receipts." These papers had been for a long time used as money through- out the colony, but of course they would not pass current any- where else. By 1750 this curious paper money was practically the only money seen in the colony, and of course the laws made by the people of Virginia had to recognize that fact. Debts, contracts, and legacies, in fact all financial transactions, were expressed, not in pounds, shillings, and pence, but in pounds of tobacco. Salaries of public cfl&cers, for example, were fixed by law at so many pounds of tobacco ; clergymen were allowed by the colonial government sixteen thousand pounds per year, with seventeen hundred poimds extra to allow for shrinkage. If the price of tobacco had always been the same, there would have been no trouble with this reckoning, but in some years the crop was so plentiful that the price was as low as a penny a pound, in which case the poor ministers and all salaried of&cers had a hard time of it. Some years the price went up, and then it became a hardship for the parishes to raise the amount fixed by law as the salaries of its ofl&cers. In the effort to remedy this trouble and to arrive at a solution that would be fair to both sides, an act was passed by the House of Burgesses in 1755, known as the "Twopenny Act," allowing any person to pay his taxes or dues of any kind in tobacco, as heretofore, or in coin at the rate of twopence for each pound of tobacco. This was supposed to be fair in the long run, for this was the average price of tobacco for the previous seven years. There was little trouble until 1758, when the law was reen- 152 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY „. acted, although the British government had dis- Parson's allowed it, and the crop was so poor that every one wished to take advantage of the law and to pay all his taxes in cash. This was so hard on those who received salaries that the trouble was not to be borne, and, oddly enough, the parties who made the most clamor were the clergymen. The "parsons," as they were called in those days, protested very vigorously, and through one of their number, Rev. James Maury, a French refugee, they made a test case that is of little importance in itself, but which had very startling consequences. There was really no trial at all, for the Twopenny Act was clearly illegal, since, according to royal regulation, every act passed by the House of Burgesses must contain a clause pro- viding that the law should not be in effect until it had been approved by the crown, and this particular law did not contain that clause. Most lawyers would have tried to be as incon- spicuous as possible in a trial in which their clients had no chance at all, but the lawyer in this case was made of different stuff. He was a young man who had hung out his shingle only a little while before, but had succeeded in obtaining a great many cases in his first year. He had studied and thought a great deal about "government," and had read all that he could find on the subject, including a Treatise on Gov- ernment by a certain Mr. John Locke. In this essay he had found many ideas with which George III would have had no sympathy at all. For instance, Mr. Locke said that govern- ment was nothing less than a contract between a king and his people. The king agreed to give his people certain things, such as justice and good government. The people contracted to give obedience and loyalty to the king. Now, Mr. Locke said, if either of the two parties to the contract should fail to carry out his part of the agreement, the other party was not AGRICULTURE 153 t^t''.'fcV/(^ obliged to fulfill his ! This young Virginia lawyer applied these ideas to \'irginia, and \Yhen he found that his side of the case could not hope to defeat the other, he thought that it would be a good opportunity to declare his \ie\vs, and to make converts, if possible, to his way of thinking. "Court" in colonial \\i- ginia was always a great occasion ; it was the time when all the l^est people got together for social as well as for legal purposes. People came for miles to hear the speeches and de- bates of the lawyers, and to attend the balls and other festivities that took place in the e\'ening. It was the one great occasion of the year for the scattered Virginia "gentry," and the people of the lower social class attended as well. This trial was \'ery impor- tant, for Mr. JNIaury was fighting the battle of every salaried public ofBcer in the colony, and there was an un- usually large attendance of the leading men of the province, planters, lawyers, clergymen. All these men, leaders in the life and thought of the colony, men loyal in name, but very bitter in their feelings against England, listened to a carefully thought out statement to the effect that the king of England ^rt^ ' £v!V I '/. !• erjT-t^t 'f^lCfl j: The Opinion of .\ (;ee.\.t Englishman ABOUT Locke's Essays on GovERXiiENx. Thomas HoUis \Yrote this on the Sy-leaf of a book which he gave to the Library of Harvard College: the book itseU (Filmer's i^u/r/arc/id) he despised, but thought it of importance be- cause it " gave occasion " to so great a work. 154 ' INDUSTRIAL HISTORY had not given the people of Virginia justice and good govern- ment, and that therefore . The young lawyer stopped there. The judge instructed the jury that under the law they must bring in damages for Mr. Maury, which they did, to the value of one penny ! The name of this young lawyer who came so near to uttering treason was Patrick Henry. We have seen that agriculture exercised a won- ment in derful influence on the history of the colony of Vir- South ginia, and we find a somewhat similar situation in Carolina. the Carolinas. If we study the history of South Carolina, we shall find that the year 17 19 marks a division of the life of the colony into two entirely distinct periods. Before that time the colony had been part of the property of the "Eight Proprietors" of the Carolinas, and had found, to its sorrow, that the government looked on the people as instru- ments to be used for the benefit of the proprietors. The griev- ances of the people were very many. No one but the agents of the proprietors could engage in the fur trade; religious liberty was entirely lacking, and religious differences were made the basis for petty persecution of the meanest sort; worst of all, the ownership of land, the one thing so dear to the hearts of the newcomers, seemed denied them. Land could be rented only on very high terms, and anything like financial success in agriculture was impossible. Their government was a curious form of feudalism, borrowed from Mexico and Germany, and utterly unsuited to the wild conditions and the semi-independ- ence of life in the new country. The proprietors forced the colonists to defend themselves against the Indians, and would spend nothing for the improvement of conditions in the colony. Taxation must cover all expenses, and the poor farmers were made to bear the brunt of it all. The type of magistrate that dealt out justice to the colonists AGRICULTURE 155 may be judged from the history of Mr. Nicholas Trott, for many years chief justice of the colony. He had been an English customs collector in the Bermuda Islands and, like all of his class, took bribes whenever he had a chance. He seems to have excited some jealousy among his fellows by his success at this sort of robbery, and the crisis came when he connived at the landing of a whole cargo of pirates. A num- ber of these gentlemen who were returning from the East, intending to retire and live as honest citizens, had reached the Bermudas, with their ship laden with money and choice goods. They stopped out of sight of port and sent a boat ashore to get the proper papers for landing. Trott agreed to give them all a clean bill of health for the sum of £1000 (equal to $20,000 to-day) ! His colleagues were very angry at such selfishness, and threatened to report him to England and have him punished for forgery. So Mr. Nicholas Trott moved somewhat hurriedly to South Carolina, where he bought the post of chief justice, thereby protecting himself from possible trouble, and enabling him to dispense a very doubtful brand of justice to the highest bidder. The government, as a whole, was of about the same sort, so bad that prosperity imder such a system or such men was impossible. The natiural result of all this trouble was a desperate attempt on the part of the colonists to take their affairs into their own hands ; it turned out to be very successful, and for ten years, xmtil a royal governor was appointed in 1729, the colonists ran their own affairs. But the people were very Httle better off, for most of the land fell into the hands of a few men who were really too poor to cultivate so much. South Carolina had no standard crop that was . . ,^ Agnculture certain to bring in a good income. Rice was dif5- in South cult to raise, and as most of it was exported to the "° ^' 156 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Mediterranean region, the demand for it was influenced by many external forces. It was a very unhealthful crop to raise, and the lives of the white laborers were rapidly sacrificed in the rice swamps. Slaves were used to better advantage, but slave labor was expensive. Indigo was a very risky crop to raise, for the process of mak- ing the dyestuff was so delicate that the slightest mistake of judgment would spoil the whole lot. The sale of the indigo depended entirely on the fashion, and was therefore very un- certain. Cotton was raised in small amounts, but none was exported until after the Revolution. So the farmer of South Carolina remained poor. He was saddled with debt and slavery, and though he realized the disadvantages of his con- dition, he thought that he could not get along without the slaves. There is nothing like constant worry to sour a man's temper. When we consider the hard time that the South Carolinians had, it is no wonder that in the Revolutionary period the people in that state were known as hot-tempered, quick to take offense, and envious of the better fortunes of some of the other colonies. Some of the most fiery of our national statesmen, those, for instance, who arose in the troubled administration of Jackson and Lincoln, have come from South Carolina. Th C tt With a scattered and sparse population slavery Gin and and farming did not agree any too well until after 1790, when the invention of the cotton gin showed the southern planter what seemed a profitable way in which to use his slaves. A cotton boll looks like a fluffy mass of little white balls of fiber. In the center of each little ball there is a small seed, from which each one of the fibers starts, and it is a slow and tedious job to separate the seed from the fibers. The "short-staple" cotton offered an almost hopeless task. An old AGRICULTURE 157 plantation requirement pro- ^■ided that "pick-up work" shoukl be cleaning the cotton, and that each head of a slave family should turn in four pounds of cleaned cotton each week, in addition to the field work performed by his family. This work was not only diffi- cult of accomplishment, but it could not be successfully superintended. Sla^-ery certainly could not be a source of wealth under such conditions, and the cotton gin was respon- sible for a great change in these conditions in the years that followed. Was it really profitable ? That depends on how Looking far ahead we look. Cotton raising certainly did ■^*'«^' something about the pLT,-on.il appearance of tliis kins;. Of course royal etiqtiette would not allow a painter to show the king as he really looked. The Poverty of the troubles, and who believed ver}- firmly in the divine Kings. right of kings to rule. When Charles could not get Parliament to grant him monej' accorchng to custom, he promptly dismissed that body, lajdng and collecting the taxes himself, mthout asking consent of anybody. For eleven years the people of England endured this tjTanny before they took up arms in defense of their liberties ; during this period thou- sands of the well-to-do middle class emigrated to the New I70 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY World. By 1643 Massachusetts Bay "Colony had sixteen thousand inhabitants, including more Englishmen than could be found elsewhere in North America. Charles was defeated by the armies of Parliament, was captured, tried, and executed January 30, 1649. For eleven years his son, Charles II, was an exile in Europe, until, in 1660, he was invited to come back and take the throne. But though the people of England were willing that he should be king, they had learned their lesson, and before they would allow him to take up the scepter, he was compelled to make promises that deprived him of much of his opportunity to do financial harm to England. He found himself a poverty- stricken king in the midst of a court full of poverty-stricken courtiers. The remarkable efforts of Charles and his friends to obtain money had a great deal to do with the later rela- tions of England and her colonies. If the early Stuarts were in serious financial difficulties, the lower classes were in far greater distress. Poverty. We must think of the England from which the Pilgrims emigrated as a land where the better classes lived in a certain sort of comfort; the necessities of life, though rude, were plentiful. In 1660 a clerk in a government office wrote in his diary — "my wife had got ready a very fine dinner, viz, a dish of marrow bones ; a leg of mutton ; a loin of veal ; a dish of fowl, three pullets and two dozen of larks all in a dish ; a great tart, a neat's tongue, a dish of anchovies ; a dish of prawns and cheese." Yet the people that we call "poor" were very much more numerous proportionately than now, and their poverty was of a terrible sort, such as we in America cannot even realize. The laws of the land were very severe on crimes of all sorts. Even as late as 1775 there were on the statute books in England more than two hundred crimes punishable with death, and there was little tendency to be charitable to the poor, although there was COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 171 a "Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts." For the poor, rigid economy was the order of the day, and hard and continuous labor was necessary for the sustaining of Hfe. Hence there were in England thousands of people who were only too glad to emigrate to the New World, in spite of the hardships of the voyage and the dangers of the new land. The people who dared the dangers of sea and land were no weaklings in character ; their bodies might be sickly, but their hearts were so set on high aims that bodily ills did not count. Their magnificent persever- ance conquered every possible difficulty, and produced in their children a character even more unbending to tyranny than their own. The people who left England in the seventeenth century and came to America were of a sort most likely to protect their liberties, even to the point of war, in the eighteenth century. If we compare the developing character of a man with that shown by a nation as it develops, we portance of shall find a great resemblance. The effect of our Inherited Traits, surroundings is to develop in us habits, good or bad. These habits get such a strong hold on us, that sometimes to conquer a bad habit seems a superhuman undertaking. Fortimately there are also good habits, formed sometiines by chance, but usually as a result of hard work and discipHne. A man is usually the worst possible judge of his own character ; he may think himself a very ordinary person, or the "victim of misfortune," when others may see in him a strong man who has gained his strength by fighting his bad habits, or they may see in him a man who has weakly surrendered to certain bad influences rather than combat them. In a similar way the life led by a nation fastens on it certain habits of life; social classes may easily acquire habits that cannot be changed in centuries. For example, in the Middle Ages men in the higher 172 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY ranks in society were soldiers whose duty it was to fight for their king; they might be described as the defenders of king and country. In return for this dangerous service they enjoyed certain privileges, such as fine hemes, splendid clothing, and freedom from manual labor. During the passage of many cen- turies conditions of life changed; the nobility were no longer defenders, but having enjoyed privileges so long, they did not wish to give them up. The contest to retain their privileges began as a part of the Renaissance, and is not yet over in Europe. The spirit of the settlers in Virginia was that of this class in society. If their ancestors had been in the habit of doing their own work, the false idea that work is beneath the dignity of gentlemen would have been outgrown, but the opportunity of personal ease offered by slave labor was too great a tempta- tion for men with their instincts to withstand. In spite of a beautiful climate, an agricultural crop that seemed especially fitted to it, and with a sufficient supply of slave labor, Virginia was nevertheless destined to lag behind the other parts of the country where a truer conception of the dignity of labor prevailed. She was condemned to a single industry, in which there was little progress. Any form of commerce or industry that was foreign to the tobacco culture could not flourish in her borders. A similar statement could be made as to the indus- tries of the colonies south of Virginia. Th En lish Much is said in English histories about the great Middle middle class. Hard working, economical, jealous Cl&ss of its privileges, all producers in some way, the middle class was the real backbone of England. But it must not be thought that these splendid traits of character had been easily acquired, or were easily kept when once obtained. Centuries of social, economic, and political hardship gave the middle class its sturdy character. When the colonies north COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 173 of Virginia were settled by these people, it remained to be seen how the changes in circumstances would aSect them. Would they relapse from their inherited habits or would the new surroundings make these excellent traits even more promi- nent ? It is a curious truth that the English middle-class people who came to the colonies developed faster along the same lines than their brethren who stayed in England, so that by 1776 America was at least a half century ahead of Great Britain. This had much to do with the outbreak of the Revolution, for there was an inevitable lack of sympathy between the colonists, stimulated to faster development by the magnificent freedom of the American wUderness, and their EngUsh cousins, held down by the same hard conditions that had forced the others to emigrate. So we should expect to find the economic Ufe of the Northern Colonies more varied than that of the colonial South. Cities on the northern coast dealt in all Develop- ment, kinds of commodities, while in the South there was only one kind of commerce in any given region. The people in the South naturally got into the habit of buying all their manufactured goods from the Northern Colonies or from Eiurope. The people of the Northern Colonies made for themselves what- ever they needed, and this tendency to industry brought with them from England, increased by the inspiration of reUgious thought and the different atmosphere of the new country, created an ingenuity of brain and hand that eventually made a great manufacturing people. Rev. Francis Higginson wrote both figuratively and literally when he said, — "a sup of New- Englands Aire is better then a whole draft of old Englands Ale." The northern colonists often had a surplus of The goods to sell. This trade provided a way to pay ^/S"^^ for the manufactured articles that they were forced Commerce. 174 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY to buy in England ; it created their shipping industry ; it made it possible to use the great store of natural wealth that the new land possessed ; it produced the habit of econo- mizing time. Most important of all, every Englishman liked his independence, the feeling that in spite of his surroundings he was in certain ways his own master. It was easy for this feeling to grow beyond sensible limits, and it required a very cool head in colonial days to discuss, without heated argument, the question of the relation of the colonies to Great Britain. ■r,T. ^ When our forefathers left their homes in the old what was this Rela- country, it was plainly understood that they were to keep their rights as Englishmen. From the time when the first colonists arrived here, they had been guided in their behavior by circumstances. The conditions in the new country led them into new ways of thinking and doing, new ways of governing themselves, of holding land, of raising money, or of attending church. Certainly these changes seem to us justified, especially since many of them afterward came about in England. The colonists failed to see that they were leaving Eng- land behind and were cutting loose from English conditions. It was easy for them to connect in their minds their new ideas with their original ideas of the rights of Englishmen. It was for this reason that in the 1760's the slogan "No Taxation WITHOUT Representation" came into use. The Americans did not seem to realize that their cousins in England had no representation in Parliament. The government of England was at that time representative only in name ; it did not become so, in fact, until after the great reform bill of 1832, and even then there was another period of forty years before the right to vote became general. The condition of England between 1603 and 17 15 was espe- cially chaotic, with a corrupt government and a general uncer- COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 175 tainty as to the law. But the thing that especially troubled the colonists was the fact that England J/'^^"^'" herself did not know just how she stood in relation British to her colonies. In other words, there was no Theory, settled colonial policy until disastrous events formed one. Minds and influences worked at cross purposes ; the only permanent idea running through all this period of unrest was the thought that the colonies must be of financial advantage to England. Of course the early years of colonial life were so occupied with the struggle for existence that almost all manu- factured articles had to be brought from England, but in about two generations Americans began to make for themselves from the raw materials at hand various things that were needed in their daily life. One can hardly imagine a greater contrast than the difference between European commercial condi- commerce tions in the seventeenth century and those in New "^ ^*^ England. England. The colonists soon found out that in the New World things must be done in a new fashion. In the Old World all commercial life was controlled by a higher author- ity. Great organizations called guilds, somewhat resembling trade-unions, kept a tight grip on trade and manufacture, while the existence of such bodies made the taxation problem easier for the government. New Englanders, who, after all, did not come to this country to find liberty, had no idea at first of a commercial system unhampered by restrictions. Re- peatedly they tried to control the price of labor and com- modities, such as corn and other grains, not only by laws regu- lating their use as articles of commerce, but by laws regarding their use as money. At a town meeting held at Boston, November 30, 1635, it was voted, "That Mr. William Hutch- inson, Mr. William Colburne and Mr. William Brenton shall 176 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY sett pryces upon all cattell comodities, victualls and labourers and Workmen's wages and that noe other prises or rates shalbe given or taken." This gives a good idea of the common theory of legal regulation of prices. It was absolutely necessary to regulate the price of such things, since they were often received by the treasurers in payment of taxes, as in the records of the town of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where on the fifth of April, 1695, "Att A Generall Town meeting of the Inhabit- ants, Orderly warned, it was then voted theise particulars following : thirdly. That Corn Shall be payd in the Rate for the Town for this year ensueing att theis prizes following viz : " Wheat att five Shillings per bushell : Indian Corn att three Shillings pr bushell : Rye att four Shillings pr bushell : Barley att four Shillings pr bushell : Oates att two Shillings pr bushell." It is interesting to notice here that these relative prices are still nearly the same. The colonists followed this custom of legal regulation with great persistence, for they passed hundreds of such laws, and repealed them all in short order. They seem to have been sure that the principle was all right, if the practice was not ! It seems to us that the Americans ought not to have been surprised when the British government applied these same theories to the plantation trade, but certainly the colo- nists received these attempts with most indignant astonishment. The position of the colonists seems to have been simply this, that they were doing such a great service for the mother country, and that their life was so full of the struggle with nature, that they ought to be excused from the artificial regulations of the Euro- pean world. COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 177 Yet in time the colonists of the North learned to Freedom doubt the wisdom of their attempts to restrain trade, °^ Trade. and they satisfied themselves with regulating the minor matters, leaving trade in general free to move as it pleased. Thus a large intercolonial trafiic sprang up, until by 1640 there was J ! 1 A Champion of the Rights of ExGLisHiiEN. This stone in Copp's Hill Buri^il Ground in the olj North End of Boston is within stone's throw of the Old North Church, and looks out over the water to the heights of Bunker Hill. The scars on the stone, so tradition says, are bullet marks, for the British soldiers did not like the sentiment e.xpressed in the inscription, and so used the stone as a target. constant intercourse between the different colonies in New England, between New England and New Amsterdam, and between these colonies and Virginia. This trade was at first limited to foodstuffs, such as corn and fish, not by any law, but by the natural circumstances. The colonists had to abandon their old ideas about controlling trade and commerce, and found 178 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY themselves compelled to permit free trade, though they were still European enough to protest against such a policy. Sooner or later some action on England's part would make them realize just where they stood. Then they would begin to count this "freedom of trade" as one of the rights of Englishmen. It was a long time before Englishmen came to see this truth, and this difference in viewpoint was a source of much hard feeling. An Englishman's objections to freedom of trade are voiced in a pamphlet printed in England about 1690: " — it not being thought reasonable that while they enjoyed all other advantages equally with their Native Country of England, they should abuse the priviledges granted them by exporting Wool and other materials for manufacture, besides Tobacco and Sugar &c. to France, Hamburg, Holland and other places in Europe, and importing back from those places not only Linnen but Woollen and all other Manufactures (which should be of English growth), Custom free; and this not only for their own consumption, but also supplying therwith most parts of the World, particularly the English Plantations, which according to the Act of Navigation ought to be supplyed from Old England, after Customs paid in and out, whereby they were inabled to bring these goods £50 per cent cheaper to their Market there, than our Merchants could : which trade incouraged their building some hundreds of ships which were imployed in these illegal trades, to the ruin of the English Navigation, and tho their ships built there, by our Laws were as those built here in Eng- land yet not above ten of them all do yearly come directly for England, but were imployed so directly as afore said." This shows where the shoe pinched. Colonial "^^ 1660, about a generation after the founding Trade in of New England, the commerce of the colonies had attained a most astonishing size. The intercolonial COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 179 traffic described in the previous paragraph had increased largely, and in addition there had sprung up a foreign trade of much importance. Many of the ports of southern and western Europe imported colonial products, especially furs, foodstuffs, and lum- ber. The last, although very bulky and therefore expensive to transport, was very cheap in the New World and in great demand in the Old. As shipbuOding became a great business in the colonies, these commodities were no longer sent in English ships owned in England, but were carried in these new colonial ships directly to the port of consignment without going through England. This was regarded in England as a great wrong, for it deprived certain EngUshmen of a chance to make money. Owners of wharves in English ports did not get * ^ * Effect on the fee demanded for the right to tie up alongside English the wharf. Innumerable stevedores lost the job Shipping '' Interests. of loading and imloading the ships. Great numbers of customs officers failed to get their "rake off" ; the cities lost the profits that came from the handling of the goods, and the nation lost the taxes that should have been collected. More- over, these colonial ships that went to European ports naturally brought back European manufactures, goods that did not pass through England ; here was another sLrmlar set of losses. The reason for this direct colonial trade may be easUy seen. Euro- peans got American goods cheaper by buying them directly, and the Americans got their European goods much cheaper than when they had passed through England and had had numer- ous little charges added to the price. Another grievance of the English merchants centered around the trade between New England and the West Indies, which by 1660 had come to be a good-sized traffic, supplying the colonists directly and very cheaply with many things that the English thought should have passed through England. The colonists I So INDUSTRIAL HISTORY would not agree to such a trade route, as they objected to the increase in price that would result. Some of these West India goods came to New England, but the larger part found their way to Europe, where they undersold English products. Now in the course of time the merchants of England came to regard their West India trade as very important, and to look on this action of the men of the New World as an infringement of the rights of Englishmen. It often happens that men engaged in any one A Scene in the Land of Cotton. Cotton was by no means king, but it was a very important product of ,a larec section of the country. Lfnfortunately it was tVie only saiable thing the South proilucecl, am] to thinlt it ail-important was a very natural mistake. business or profession get an exaggerated idea of their own importance tcj the country. This hapi)ened in the South before the Civil War, where men thought that the prosperity of the whole country depended on them and their product ; their slogan "Cotton is King" was a great mistake. Again in the iSfjo's the silver men seemed to have a similar idea. Of course the fact is that prosperity is made up of a great many elements ; no one is essential, though a great many may be im- portant. The British merchant class had the mistaken idea that the prosperity of the whole empire depended on their COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS i8l success. Hence the merchants naturally used all their influence to have laws made that would tend to throw all British maritime business into their hands. The business of the colonies was, in their opinion, to furnish the raw materials, while the English should have the profits of carrying them and of manufacturing them. This seemed to the British government the nat- p. , j. ural order of things, but how was it regarded in Mercantile the colonies ? The English financial interests spent much time in "counting their money." They worried over their relative cash basis as compared with other countries, and sometimes studied that matter so intensely that they lost aU sense of the real proportion of things, and thought that the nation was being ruined because the importation of gold and silver was hindered or stopped. So great a man as wise old Joshua Gee, who wrote (1730) "The Trade and Naviga- tion of Great Britain Considered," ended his book with this paragraph : "The Trade of a Nation is of Mighty Consequence, and a Thing that ought to be seriously weighed, because the Happiness or Misfortunes of so many Millions depend upon it. A Little Mistake in the Beginning of an Undertaking may swell to a very great one. A Nation may gain vast Riches by Trade and Commerce, or for Want of due Regard and Attention, may be drained of them. I am the more wUling to mention this, because I am afraid the present Circumstance of ours carries out more Riches than it brings home. As there is cause to appre- hend this, surely it ought to be look'd into; and the more, since if there be a Wound, there are Remedies proposed, which, if rightly applied, will make our Commerce flourish, and the Nation happy." He had studied the trade for the year 1723, and had found that he could trace the export of more than a hundred and seventy tons of silver and about eleven tons of i82 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY gold! In another place, he says, " — yet so Mistaken are many People, that they cannot see the Difference between having a vast Treasure of Gold and Silver in the Kingdom, and the Mint employed in coining money, the only true Token of Treasure and Riches, and having it carried away ; but they say Money is a Commodity like other Things, and think themselves never the poorer for what the Nation daily exports." The writings of Joshua Gee show in what way the " mercantile theory " grew up. Like most theories, the mercantile theory grew slowly; in- deed, we might almost say that it became established before people realized that there was such a theory. We find traces of this idea as early as 1650, although the eighteenth century was well started before it was clearly stated, and during the Revolu- tion we find it expressly offered as the justification for the taxation of the colonies. It amounted simply to this, that the richest and most prosperous nation was the one that had the most money in its possession. Hence statesmen considered themselves justified in making their plans with this idea as their objective point. The colonies, as part of the nation, must play their part in drawing in the money; England must be self-supporting, and must have a surplus to export. So very important was all this, that the mother country did not think it necessary to con- sult the colonies as to their personal wishes or to consider their circumstances, for, after all, if the mother country should go to ruin, where would the colonies be ? This is only another ex- ample of the failure of the British government to xmderstand the situation. We must be careful not to blame them too much for this mistake, for, after all, governments, like people, must learn by experience, and one cannot learn everything in a moment. COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 183 The year 1660 marks the return of King Charles r^^^^ II to England. But he returned to very little power, Navigation for the whole government was in confusion, the court was poverty-stricken, and Parliament was so jealous of its rights that the king could do little. A good many of the results that were accomphshed were not at all due to any good quality of the king, but to the efEorts of some officers of the government to reduce chaos to order. As a result of one of these efiforts Parliament, in 1660, passed the law which, with later additions, is known as the Navigation Act. This law, when it was fully formed, required that no goods should be taken to the colonies save in ships owned and manned by Englishmen. It provided also that certain colonial products, known as the enumerated goods (sugar, tobacco, cotton, indigo, and other dyestuffs), should be taken directly to England, and not to any European port. Foreigners were prohibited from engaging in trade with the colonies. Another act of Parliament to be considered with the Naviga- tion Act was called the "Tonnage and Poundage Act," which directed that duties should be levied on goods taken into or out of England or any of her colonies. The writers of these acts seem to have thought that the penalties would enforce the laws, but as a matter of fact the Tonnage and Poundage Act was never enforced in the colonies, and there was only an occasional effort to enforce the Navigation Act. Here again the fault seems to be lack of experience in good government. The English government was j^^jj ^^^^ composed of three branches, much as ours is, but not En- there was a curious lack of harmony among the three parts. For example, the Parliament made the laws, but the actual work of government was carried on by an army of clerks governed by the traditions of the office, who did 184 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY business just as had the men who had previously held their places. Government officers were so poorly paid that they must of necessity support themselves by some sort of dishonesty. For example, if Parliament passed a new law about customs duties, the government clerks paid little attention to it, unless some person was interested in having it enforced. In such a case, it was necessary to pay for the service. From time to time a "book of rates" was issued, a huge volume as large as Webster's Dictionary, printed in black letter, and as difficult to understand as a Chinese puzzle. An enterprising collector could underbid the officers of other cities and so attract trade, and by a smaller "rake off " on a larger amount of business could amass a fortune. He could then sell his place for far more than he paid for it. Under such a system it is no wonder that the laws were not enforced, and that the colonists, generation after generation, came to believe that the laws of Parliament need not be enforced if one had the money to pay for breaking them. What must have been the colonial feeling when in the eighteenth century a determined effort was made to enforce the laws? A good example of the nonenforcement of parliamentary laws is the so-called Sugar Act of 1733. The Sugar Islands were terribly reduced in circumstances, so that they were practically bankrupt. By a great effort the sugar interests secured the passage of an act calculated to help the situation in the islands. Perhaps it would have helped matters, but apparently the money gave out, for there was never the slightest attempt on the part of the customs people to enforce the law. Sometimes we find that family arrangements interfered with the laws, as in the case of Sir Robert Southworth, the head of the customs department of the British government, who was so related by marriage to the treasury and colonial departments that posi- COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 185 lively nothing could be done in any one department to embar- rass the others ! Such a system of government can only be demoralizing to all concerned. WilHam Blathwayt began his official career about ^ xypical 1675, as clerk to a committee that had charge of Government Clerk. plantation affairs. He gradually worked his way into two other clerkships of much the same sort, and finally became one of the foiu: clerks of the Privy Coundl. Through his knowledge of foreign languages he made himself useful to the government at the time of the "Popish Plot," and in other ways he showed his desire to rise, even if his services were not always strictly honorable. He had about as much real sense of honor as had Samuel Pepys, who thanked heaven most piously when he had been able to steal a larger amount than usual. Blathwayt saw the revolution of i68g coming, pre- pared for it by treason to James II, became what we would call Secretary of war under King William, and finally his confiden- tial secretary. As William was in Holland for nearly all of his reign, Blathwayt was much more king of England than William was. He was "surveyor general of the customs" for the col- onies, which means that he had complete control of them so far as the enforcement of the Navigation Act was concerned. He was frequently a member of Parliament and after 1696 a member of the Board of Trade. Some of these offices he kept until his death in 1719. Thirty years before his death, long before he came to the height of his power, his income was estimated by one of his friends to be not less than two hun- dred thousand dollars per year, the larger part of it coming from fees. To give a fitting climax to his story, he married an heiress! It was apparent that under the guidance of such a man, who for twenty-five years was the practical ruler of the colonies, colonial affairs could hardly be run with far-seeing wisdom. l86 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY When an Englishman speaks of the war of 1775- Glorious 1783, he calls it the American war; when he speaks Revolu- of the "revolution," he means the political over- turn that ousted James II in 1688-1689, and placed on the throne Mary, the elder daughter of James, and her husband, William of Orange. This was far more than a mere change in the royal family ; it was an entire change in the govern- ment of England. William spent very little time in England, passing nearly all his life in Holland, where he was the mainstay of Protestantism in the great contest with the power of France. Thus left to herself England found opportunity for the forma- tion of political parties. The king's power was made more sure, and a new method of governing the colonies was produced which was designed to make them more subservient to English author- ity. During the years from 1660 to i68g, while Charles II and his brother James II were ruling, the king (in theory) was supreme over the colonies. This did not mean very much, for under incapable kings the colonies did much as they pleased. But William was a man of intellect and worth, with strong serv- ants, and he did not wish to let the colonies go on in a haphazard way. Hence in 1696 was formed "The Board of Trade and Plan- tations," a body of men of some standing and experience, whose duty it was to control the colonies, and whose recommendations would be carried out by the orders of the Privy Council. Two men on this Board are of especial interest to us, John Locke and William Blathwayt. The good intention of this action was never carried Board of ^^^- "^^^ British government was so disjointed that Trade the recommendations of the Board were often ig- FaUed. j rm nored. The strong men who were at first put on the Board soon dropped out, and the large salary attached to the position ($20,000 a year in our money) made it an object of desire COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 187 to men who were unfit for such work. In a generation the Board had become a joke ; one of its members, who could talk very well about nothing at all, was called by the nickname of "Trade" ; the rest were called the "Board " ! When affairs came to such a pass that bad poets were disposed of by being put on the Board, as was Mr. Soame Jenyns, the colonists might well despair of just treatment. The original members, ad-, vised no doubt by Blathwayt, had put in motion a very good sys- tem of keeping tab on the colonies ; this system was continued nearly to the Revolution (1768), carried out in letter only. The colonial governors were required to send in long reports of the doings in their provinces, and they did so, as a rule, but the Board rarely paid any attention to these reports, and long letters, carry- ing news of the greatest importance, were not opened for years. So slow was the machinery of government that even when every- thing was done as promptly as possible, it took about two years for the governor of a colony to get an answer to such a letter. From the enormous body of these reports in the Records Ofl&ce it would seem that some of the governors spent most of their time in writing. One of them, "Gabe" Johnson of North Carolina, was an exception, for once he was reminded, very gently, that he had not been heard from for about eleven years. This shows the way in which the Board was dealing with its correspondents. Another way in which the colonies were hampered by the Board was by a regulation that all the laws passed in the colonial legislatures must be sent to England to be passed on by the lawyers of the crown. These laws must con- tain a clause providing that they should not go into effect until they had been affirmed; that is, had received the royal sanction. If this regulation had been faithfully performed by both parties, it would have been a very good thing, but it was uniformly neg-' lected, and there were many cases where the colonists were driven l88 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY to their wits' end because laws that were very necessary to them were held up in England. Sometimes they passed "resolves" instead of laws, or ignored the necessity of having the laws ap- proved. The former was done in Massachusetts, the latter hap- pened more than once, the best-known case being in Virginia. Early in the eighteenth century the Massachusetts legislature passed a law regarding the inheritance of property, that was, in due course, sent to England to be approved. Nothing was heard from it for forty years, when it came up and was disapproved. Then it developed that the people of the colony had been living under its provisions all that time, and that a large amount of property in the colony was therefore wrongly held. In cases where laws really did come under the eyes of the royal lawyers, there was so little sympathy that laws most necessary for the good of the colonies were often disapproved in sum- mary fashion, and their authors censured roundly. It will be seen from this, that the creditable purpose of the Board of Trade, to cherish and encourage colonial trade, was entirely frustrated. Misunderstandings and friction of all sorts could only follow such bad administration, and the colonists could only become more confirmed in their attitude of suspicion toward the mother country. Thus the only sensible attempt to control the commercial relations between Great Britain and America was a dismal failure. _ , , One of the serious drawbacks in the business life of Lack of Coin in the Colonies was the lack of "change." Wampum, Endand ^^^ currency of the Indians, was found inadequate in many respects. It was very bulky and of un- certain value; from four to six beads passed for a penny in value, white beads being worth only half as much as black. In de- fault of any sufficient amount of standard money it was neces- sary to have recourse to barter, or to the use of staple goods as a COMJIERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 189 ,I90 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY means of exchange. This was called "country pay," and in order to establish a basis of value in exchange it was thought necessary to have the general court fix the price of all commodities by law. This immediately gave rise to all sorts of disputes as to the relative value of goods. The position of colonial treasurer, who was obliged to receive all sorts of articles in payment of taxes and dues, was not an enviable one when these goods turned out to be of poor quality, or lessened in value on his hands. In 1656 "The secritary, as agent for the coloneys two yeares past, was payd by the Treasurer forty-two pounds odd money in Indian corne, at 3 s per bushell, which he could put off but 80 bushells at 2 s 6 d per bushell, on their account, with much dis- content, not makeing two shillings or above of the rest; the money was payd for the country account in England, & there- fore the Court thinkes meet to allow him ten pounds for such his loss, to be payd him now by the Treasurer." It was impossible to make bargains for any future time, on account of the uncer- tainty regarding the future value of goods. It often happened that because of a great abundance or an unusual scarcity, the natural and the legal price of goods varied at different times. At such times it became necessary for the lawmakers to pass some new regulation regarding the price. It is interesting to note that in 1659, and probably much later, the students at Harvard College, almost without exception, paid their tuition in "country pay "; even the governor of the colony followed this custom, so scarce was coin. There was some silver in circulation among the people of the colonies, brought in from outside, most of it Spanish money from the West Indies. A good deal of this was worth less than face value, through wear, counterfeiting, or "sweating," and all of it was below par from the fact that it contained but 70 per cent silver. The people of Massachusetts saw plainly that good money was needed for good business. COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 191 In 1652, in order to remedy this dif&culty, the ^j^^ iSIassachusetts General Court decided to establish Massachu- and maintain a mint for the coining of silver into the small denominations so much needed. They had an xm- doubted right to do this under the charter rights granted them, and for a long time they had no idea that they might be accused of doing anything wrong. Nowadays we consider it one of the most vital principles of government that the coining or print- ing of money should be confined to the highest authority in the land, but this legal principle, like many others, grew up very slowly, and in the middle of the seventeenth century it was not thought of great importance. Late in the reign of Charles II certain royal officers, who wished to make the crown more power- ful, started to confiscate charters, both in England and America. In seeking a pretext for recalling the charter of Massachusetts they complained against the Massachusetts mint on the ground that "pyrats" were in the habit of taking their iU-gotten silver there and having it recoined, so that the former owners could no longer identify it! So with the loss of the charter the mint was shut down and was never reopened, although there was still great need of money. We shall see what steps were later taken to supply the demand. The first vote of the legislature in 1652 directed _. _. that these coins "shalbe for forme flatt & square Tree on the sides," which seems to mean that the edges should be regular and even, not rounded and irregular. MUled coins did not come into use until 1728. The first coins minted under this law were plain except that on one side were the letters N. E., and on the other the figures showing the value, either XII, VI, or ni. They were called "northeasters." These plain coins evidently were unsatisfactory, for later in 1652 the General Court directed that all the coins should "have iga INDUSTRIAL HISTORY a double ringe on either side, with this inscription (Masathu- sets) & a tree in the center on the one side, and New England, & the date of the yeare on the other side." The dies were al- tered occasionally, but as long as they were minted the original date, 1652, was kept on the coins. The colonists had suffered severely from a lack of coinage, and they did not propose to allow these small coins to leave their borders ; so they saw to it that there was only seventy-five per cent of silver in the alloy. The coins did wander widely, however, and the efforts of Mr. John Hull, the mint master, did not serve to supply enough currency. Hence country pay and Spanish coins cbntinued in use among many of the people, and it must be confessed that the pine tree shillings failed as an attempt to help the situation. J. . . The "glorious revolution" of 1689 did not bring Legal to the people of New England the help that they wished. A new charter was granted, but the fric- tion between colonial and home government almost imme- diately became greater than ever, because many of the most pressing needs of the colonists were ignored, and the Amer- icans felt obliged to help themselves. The business situation in the colonies was worse than it had been for a long time. Vir- ginia felt the low price of tobacco very keenly ; Indian troubles at home and wars in Europe interfered with commerce, and the help they should have had from England did not come. More- over, the West Indies, with which the colonies had so much to do, were far from prosperous. The people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were the first to devise a scheme to remedy the money troubles ; they beheved that if these could be helped, the commercial situation could not fail to improve. The im- mediate cause of the legislation was the scarcity of money, and the necessity of meeting the expenses of the wars. COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 193 There could be no doubt of the necessity. There The were many debts to be paid, and the pay of the sol- Necessity, diers was a debt of peculiar honor. A pamphleteer of 1690 said, "Silver in New England is like the water of a swift Running River, always coming, and as fast going away ; one (in its pas- age) dips a Bucket-full, another a Dish or Cup-full for his oc- casions ; but if the Influx of plate from the West-Indies be stopt but for a little while, and the EfHux in Returns for England continue, will not the Mill-pond be quickly drained, so as neither Bucket nor Cup can dip its fill?" New Englanders did not realize that their plunge was destined almost to drown the American people under a sea of paper money perplexities for the greater part of two centuries, before they should learn how to manage this risky servant. Nearly all the colonies followed the example of Massachusetts in the next century, some of them driven by the same necessity, but many of them without any excuse at all. The colonies that did a large importing business did have some shadow of excuse for their action. This is a name given to one of those mysterious Gresham's tendencies in the world, which are so uniform in ^*^" their workings that we speak of them as laws. The simplest statement of it is that bad money always drives out good money ; it does not always work in the same way, but the effect is always the same. If a man has a roll of bills, and there is one of them that looks worn and dirty, he usually tries to get rid of that one ; or if he has a handful of silver, he usually keeps the brightest and freshestlooking. If aman wants to hoard money, he naturally lays away the best gold pieces that he can find. In these and many other ways the good money always tends to stay in people's pockets, while the bad money tends to stay in circulation. In our own day it makes no real difference what we keep and what we spend, for all our money is good for its face value; so it is o ,194 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY hard for us to realize that what is to us a matter of whim was a very serious matter with our forefathers. This is the way in which Gresham's law worked with them. The colonies did a large importing business with Europe, but although they always sent a great deal of goods over, after about 1700 what they bought back from Europe annually amounted to more than what they sent. So the colonies were always in debt to England, and had to pay this balance in some other way than "country pay." The "balance of trade was against them," as the economists would say. The only way to pay this balance was in money, this meant that gold and silver in large quantities would have to go out of the colonies every year. Now it happened that the gold and silver coins already in the colonies were an odd collection, brought from everywhere, some good and some very poor in actual value. Hence the English merchants to whom this debt was due would take these coins only at the actual value of the metal in them. So when an American merchant paid his debt in England, he selected the best coins that he could find, for even then the value of them fell from twenty-five to forty per cent when they were melted down and recoined into English money. This process, kept up indefinitely, left in the colonies a very large amount of poor coin, so poor that people did not like to accept it in trade. We shall see later how this necessity of exporting the best coins made great trouble for us in one of the great crises of our national existence. What were Another bothersome part of the problem was that the Coins the coins differed in value in the different colonies. Thus the " piece-of-eight " passed in England for 45. 6d., but in Massachusetts for 65. The eighth part of a piece-of- eight was a shilling in New York (hence the expression, York shilling), while in New England and Virginia it was only gd. and in Pennsylvania it was worth about iid. In 1704 the British COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 19s government tried to obtain uniformity in the colonies by mak- ing the Massachusetts valuation the colonial standard; this is just another example of the folly of trying to check economic evils by passing laws against them. It is a human instinct to do something quickly when in trouble, and often, in our perplex- ity, we do the wrong thing, and this was what happened in the colonies during the first half of the eighteenth century. The experience of Pennsylvania proved that it _,. „ is possible for honest, cool-headed people to use Money paper money safely, but in most of the colonies it became a craze. Presses could not print the money as fast as it '^W. ^^^3^^^^^-& ^^ it .'V-r^M ■ ' -— r- "reRSET, 1% i^f^-i X for /«w Penny- wei|hf, [""^"""- tmittcn, 01 piintcn, anp Copp of anp mm (ot\)U than tfjc Ip^c&atc tijcrcof; 05onition, 'Libel, anftocv, allegation, InDcnvon', 02 Ecnunciation m Ccclc^ fiaQical »i9attcc0 tn anp fuel) Court, a %tamp iDutp of ©ir jS>cncc. Donations, foi cocrj) ©klu 0? li?iccc of Uslluni cott,o,;i"in 01 l^arcjmcnt, o? ©Ixct 02 Pkcc of itimtion5,Re- }papcr, on toljiclj ftall be ■ umvo- cd, frtfxe^w tojittcn, 0? pjintcD, ani' u^onatioh, J5!C= nuis', ceniii- fentation. Collation, oz JnQitution oi tar^.o; Dc. qj jq gj-jy ^j3cnEfiCe, 0? aHP IGUt CI J\V flnnncnt fo? tijc like j^urpofc, o; cnv l\catflcv, Cntri), CcGimomal, o? Ccr^ tificatc of anp S^cavcc taken m any Onitierfitp, 3caDcnvJ, CcUccre, oi Sc^ mtnarp of ILcarniriir, unti)in tiic fato Colonics ano 'plantations, a Stamp Dutpof Cttjo 15>ounDs. JTo? fDcrp ©km oj Piece of acllum Anfwers, Ai- 02 li^atcliincht, 01 ©bcct 0? Piece of .o?mafo,'-,"' Paper, on toljicij fnall be mncoffcD, LtttersotRe- U)?ittcn, 02p?nitcD, anp a3onition, Jli' ?,onl' lenun. bet. Claim, anftucc, "ailciTation, Jn^ ciat'ons In- fojutation, letter of JRcoticn, Cteci!= rK;'u";o7-tion> iRenunciaiion, Jnneuto?;', o?ot[;cr A Page of the Stamp Act. The colonists knew that the English considered too much education dangerous for the colonial mind; hence they saw in the duty of £2 ($.30, 00) on diplomas a direct hit at a great blessing. 202 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY found, when they estimated it, that more than one fourth of all the commerce of England was concerned with the colonies. In short, English trade was sure to be ruined unless Parliament forbore to afflict the colonies with the stamp tax. And although the storm blew over for the time, great mischief was done. The By 1765 there were many in the colonics who were Mischief. wealthy, and who saw before them a wonderful opportunity for getting more wealth by better and safer means, Tii)'; "Stami" Act" Stami". This stamp was embossed on u piece of [icavy l>!ue pMjier luily a liLLJe lart^'er tlian tlie impres- sion. Before tlie embossing was done, a little piece of the paper was punched out nw\ a piece of soft metal let into the hole. Then tlie embossing was done, and a " sticker " a little smaller than a two-cent stamp was pasted on the back, covering the metal. This was to prevent counterfeiting. Remember that these st.imps were never actually used. In this photograph the sticker is enlarged to show the design. From the specimen in the Library of Harvard College. and of securing poUtical power in proportion. These men were frightened by the possibilities of the mischief that might come from George and his advisers. There were many in the colonies who were not leaders by any means, but who were uneasy spir- its with a wish to be leaders. They needed an issue and a slogan to bring them into the public eye, and Parliament kindly fur- nished them with both. There were others who Iiad served their military apprenticeship in the Seven Years' War, and who had the courage to oppose English arms if the necessity should arise. Most important of all, there was the tendency toward COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONAL DAYS 203 expansion that was almost an instinct in the character of the American. In his stupid blindness to conditions George III tried to confine the Americans on the west, and the mere fact of this attempt was enough to excite a desire more intense even than the Americans themselves understood at the time. It is often to the deep, underlying motives, so little understood, that we owe the most revolutionary events in history. The best picture of the colonies and colonial _ ^^^ feeling is to be found in the report of the examina- before the tion of Benjamin Franklin before the House of Commons. It often happened that men who were known to possess unusual knowledge on an important point were sum- moned to the bar of the House and questioned by the members so as to bring out the facts desired. In the early days of Feb- ruary, 1766, when the question of repealing the Stamp Act was before the House, Franklin was summoned as the one available man who knew all about colonial conditions. Franklin was one of the greatest actors of all history ; he had an expression of singular simplicity, a simple honesty that seemed to forbid any possibility of deceit. Yet he had a way of saying and doing things that left a decided sting. He frequently told the whole truth about matters, and people did not know whether to pity him because he knew no better, or to be angry with him. So when he was to appear before the House, his exami- nation was partly arranged beforehand, so as to bring out certain facts. Qwstim. " What is your name and place of abode ? " Answer. "Franklin, of Philadelphia." Franklin succeeded in getting the attention of his hearers at once. The word " franklin," the Saxon for freeman, appealed to every Englishman, and especially to the love of freedom that 204 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY is SO strong an element in the English character. The very name " Philadelphia," city of brotherly love, was a reproach to the English way of treating the colonies. How could one know whether to ascribe all this to accident and simplicity, or to the most careful forethought ? Many things were brought out in striking fashion in the questions and answers. The colonies were in reality very heavily taxed, and bore many expenses that might well be borne by Parliament, and in the late war the colonies had raised and paid 25,000 men, while England had made good only a very small part of this defense expense. The people of America would not submit even to a moderated stamp tax unless com- pelled by force of arms. The population of the colonies doubled every twenty-five years. The colonies had not ob- jected to " external taxation," but to the attempt of Parliament to interfere in the private affairs of the colonies. Manufac- ture on a small scale was general throughout the Northern Colonies. The colonies were always ready and willing to grant aids to the crown. The most important answer in the whole examination came when Franklin was asked about the effect of a tax on the necessities of life, and he answered, "I do not know a single article imported into the Northern Colonies, but what they can either do without, or make themselves." The most dramatic point was at the very end : — Question. "What used to be the pride of Americans?" Answer. "To indulge in the fashions and manufactures of Great Britain." Question. "What is now their pride?" Answer. "To wear their old cloaths over again, till they can make new ones." Though this should have been a revelation to George III, he did not seem to notice it in the least. COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 205 When the quarrel between colonies and mother Tj,ej.iyg country had gone so far that Parliament felt it Intolerable necessary to punish the colonies, the question arose, how best could the colonies be made to recognize their guilt? The British government failed to heed Franklin's statements, for it had the idea that the rebellious feeling was confined to the Northern Colonies and to a few individuals. It also failed to realize that its own mistaken policy had developed in the Ameri- cans a disregard for English law, a confidence in their own powers and the righteousness of their cause, and an ingenuity that enabled them to supply all their own wants. With incon- ceivable folly George thought that it would be very easy to crush the rebels by temporarily crushing their commerce; he liked to talk about keeping the colonies in a state of "subjec- tion " or dependence on the crown, not realizing that by throwing them on their own resources he was simply making it more diflScult to subdue them in the end. George found the Five Intolerable Acts a failure, just as all the attempts at taxing the American colonies had been. But they were worse than a fail- ure, for by driving the colonists to desperation, the king took their attention from their commercial woes, and focused it on their political grievances. So poor George worked the destruc- tion of his most cherished plans. Fortunately for the cause of American independ- Commerce ence, the Parliament of England was completely and Money under the thumb of George III. It was hard enough ^"^e *« ° Revolution. to get an idea into George's head, but impossible to get one out, even though unfortunately it might be a wrong idea. Though there were men of wisdom in the king- dom, George employed the worst possible ministers simply because they were the only men who would do his will regard- less of right or good judgment ; he employed the worst possible 206 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY generals and admirals, because better men would not serve him. He had the worst possible ideas of colonial conditions, because his mind was narrow and sluggish, and he could not learn by experience. Believing in the divine right of kings to rule, he thought that whatever he did was right, and that whatever he believed must therefore be true. One of his fixed ideas was that the re\'olt of the colonies was encouraged by their foreign commerce, and that if he could on'y destroy that, he would /i^rnia^r J%>/^V, a,i i>t^ ^yut^f/g/^^ (//f'zeft i^y, '//, /^>.,y'y, /'»/- .^WfiW^ /i/" /!/if'//i^ //i'- //■•/'■"' /^ A/v^^ „/ //^ ^ .y9.^/ ///,: .^/. yf ., '//"^^..r^ /Ur^., a^ C Lar^t /,/^^r /,. //. y. . :m //l.£/-/>J/a//,/«r^. /, //^^. ^; A Bkoad-mindi 1) Englishman. From the tille-p.igc of a hook in the Liljrary of Harvard College. It is well to remember that ill spite of the narrow-minded men around George III. there were some who would ha\'e avoided trouble with the colonies. starve out the rebels. George III did not l^elieve the statements of Benjtimin Franklin. He wished to make friends in the col- onies, so he ordered that money be borrowed, even at I'uinous rates, and be .spent in (he colonies for supplies of all sorts for the army. The cohmists accepted the gold gladly, promptly pocketed it, and went on writing pamphlets and molding bul- lets. The French also wished to make friends in the colonies, and in addition to lending them several millions in gold, though it was hard to get, the French army and navy spent a great deal of money in every place in which they stopped. In ac- cordance with Gresham's law, this money was also held in re- serve. One traveling in the colonies during the Revolution would have found that the country was very poor, lacking hard COMMERCE AND MONEY IN COLONIAL DAYS 207 money, but with an abundance of worthless paper money- The guarantee behind this paper was worthless, hence the paper speedily became so. When the Revolution ended, there was plenty of good money in the country. The problem then was SPECIilLN UF CONTIXEXTAL PAPER CtRRENCY, I776. Tribul^itio dllat means Trouble enriches. to bring it out into circulation. Commerce existed, with a great demand for goods, but until law and order were assured there could be little trade on a large scale. When, after the Revolution, the new nation set 1783-1789. out to establish a government, intercolonial jealousy proved a great h\ndrance. Each state feared for its rights in com- petition wiih other states and hesitated before the necessity of giving t.reat power even to the national government. The government must provide for commerce, foreign and domestic, a solid system of money, and a chance of development. For 2o8 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY all of these purposes there was need of a strong central govern- ment, able to take care of itself and to make its laws respected, but six terrible years passed before the people acknowledged this fact. During this time there were many who thought anarchy the only possible end. Honesty in commerce and finance seemed hard to stick to in times when circumstances were against honest gains. The making of the Constitution of the United States shows how thoroughly the men of the time were aware of their needs, and how well they provided for them in the government. Their Constitution has stood the test of time so well that after the lapse of more than a hundred and twenty years, it still remains the best and simplest fundamental code of law in the world. CHAPTER Vin Colonial Government The first elements that entered into the formation t. ,■ .. English of the English race were the Brythons and Celts Ideas of of prehistoric times. Next it was influenced by '^°'®™™*°*' Romans, then by Germans (Saxons, Jutes, and Angles) and Northmen (Danes and Norwegians), and finally by the Norman- French. Each of these peoples came to the island, conquered it, and was absorbed into the population, losing its separate language and national characteristics in the formation of an entirely new national type. Throughout this long period of development the ideas of government that prevail in England and America to-day have been gradually formulated. In the days before the final conquest of Britain (1066) the government of England was a very loose ^"'? . form of monarchy. Local divisions of the country Conditions ,r . J T. J -J mucli like were self-govemmg, and had some recognized au- American, thority in the representative body of the larger divisions. Thus the average man had a good deal more freedom than we are apt to associate with a medieval monarchy. The largest representative body in the kingdom was the Witanage- mot, or assembly of "magnates." This met at irregular times and places, and was attended by such great men as the king chose to siunmon, certain clergymen, and men representing the other classes of society. The duty of this body was to advise the king, and to spread the knowledge of the laws. The working of this system depended largely on the character of the mon- F 209 2IO INDUSTRIAL HISTORY arch ; sometimes the Witan was hardly more than a form, some- times it practically governed the country. However, the idea grew slowly that the government was for the benefit of the people, and that they therefore had a direct interest in it. This attitude was simply a survival of the old free spirit of the Germanic peoples. _ , . With the coming of Norman William in 1066 the Breaking ° the King's whole system of representation threatened to col- Power lapse, for William intended to be an absolute mon- arch. However, the Norman kings found by experience that local government, aside from the question of taxation, was best I ■ Iv-W -''-^VifU^*«(7 .y • € Jin ef tnoncmcentU. . -f|tic-l*- ^ -VX ^ ^ «^ ►, «5 i^^^ I >v^l t^ -^ ]5 « ^-i^hr t) ^ K Iv wT V , S 5 ■J' r ^ < f^ 4^ i^ '^'"^ii .;? > ;kM' 2l8 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY The people of this company were of a different The Massa- chusetts class from those who settled New Plymouth, bemg ^*^ better educated and more wealthy, but they re- sembled the Pilgrims in that they were exiles for conscience' sake. The Massachusetts Bay Company in form was similar to the other trading companies, but its history was different. It is of the greatest importance, because our ideas of government have been much influenced by the experience of these men. The "adventurers" or investors were "freemen of the company," and could vote in the general court, which met four times a year to carry on the business of the company. The general court elected a smaller body, called the assistants, to help the governor of the company. The men who organized this company wished to escape from the tyranny of Charles I, to "form a particular church," and they were afraid that the king would keep a firm hand on them by the threat of confis- cating their charter if they did not do as he wished. This had happened already in the case of the Virginia Company, and Charles was even more prone to do illegal things than his father had been. So, to secure their charter, they did something unprec- edented, but not as yet forbidden ; they moved the company, bag and baggage, to America, taking the charter with them, thus for the time preventing the king from taking it away from them. Once settled in the new world, the struggle for exist- ence forced them into other ways of living and thinking, and the charter became, in time, more or less a shadowy document, fading from the minds of each generation until in fifty years there was probably no one in the colony who knew accurately what was in the document ; very few had so much as seen it. In fact, once settled, the government of the Massachusetts Bay Company progressed naturally, growing and changing with the needs of the colony and altering with the times. From COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 219 1629 to 1684 the people of the Massachusetts Bay colony were a self-governing body. We must not make the mistake of thinking that Democratic these founders of Massachusetts Bay colony were Tendencies, imusually democratic in spirit, or that they were consciously seeking liberty. What they wanted to do was to live and worship as they chose. They were very particular to keep out every one who did not agree with them on all matters. The founders tried to keep the government in their own hands by refusing admission to freemen who had the right to vote, in order that the voting privilege might be confined to a very few men. Soon those who did not have the right to vote became so many that they were able to demand that the scheme of govern- ment be changed and that other men be admitted to the voting privilege. There were stUI restrictions, but any man of orthodox belief and good reputation could become a landowner and voter. The Massachusetts Bay Company looked upon who owned itself as the sole owner of all the land in "all that *^^ ^*°'*^ Parte of Newe England in America, which lyes and extendes betweene a great River there comonlie called Monomack River, alias Merrimack River, and a certen other River there, called Charles River, being in the Bottome of a certen Bay there, com- onlie called Massachusetts, alias Mattachusetts, alias Massa- tusetts Bay ; and also all and singuler those Landes and Heri- ditaments whatsoever l5ring within the Space of Three Enghshe Myles on the South Parte of the said River, called Charles River, or of any or every Parte thereof, . . . and also all those Landes and Heriditaments whatsoever which lye and be within the Space of Three Englishe Myles to the Northward of the saide River, called Monomack, alias Merrimack, or to the Northward of any and every Parte thereof," etc. The charter goes on to show that the company owns these lands as fuUy as it is possi- 220 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY ble for a subject to own the lands of his king. When a group of the freemen of the company wished to form a settlement, they obtained a charter or act of incorporation from the gen- eral court, with a land grant having certain bounds. All the land in this area was regarded as being the common property of the whole body of petitioners; each citizen then selected the tract of land that he wished to have for himself, with due regard to the rights of the others, and ownership was granted to him by his associates. Of course each town was glad to increase its population, but all applicants were rigidly inspected. When a family applied for permission to settle in the colony, church and town govern- ment must be satisfied before a grant of land might be made to the head of the family, and he be received as a voter and church member. If the family did not meet with the approval of the inhabitants in religious matters, or if there was anything in the history of the family that made them undesirable settlers, they must move on. They might be welcomed in Rhode Island, "the home of the otherwise minded." In this way the town's common or ungranted land slowly became smaller in area until it had nearly all been granted to settlers. In almost every one of the old New England towns one still finds a " Com- mon," the remainder of the once unsettled portion of the orig- inal land grant. In contrast to the complex land system of England the ease of acquiring land in America was responsible for the rapid populating of the country, and we cannot be too thankful that it attracted to our shores the ambitious, hard- working, economical middle class of the English people, with many millions of desirable emigrants from other countries. Early These early settlers made such civil regulations as Massachu- were necessary, together with such rules for living as aw. ^j^g.^ religious beliefs demanded. Then, worried be- COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 221 cause these laws were not universally understood, and fearing an- archy when the older generation should have passed away, they formulated a code of such fundamental laws as they thought essential to the welfare of the colony. In 1641 this code was written out, and it was called the "Body of Liberties," or "The Liberties of the Massachusetts Colonic in New England." These laws displayed little of the spirit of charity, and they C.fC^/r - — ^-I i ' ■ ^^'^. ; X- ^..V-ii"-'' /■ J ■ ■~" — Part of a Page or the M assachx'setts Body of Liberties, 1641. If any man after lepall conviction siiall haue or worship any other god, but ye lord god, he shall be put to death. If any man or woemanbe a witch, (that is hath or consulteth wth a familiar spirit), they shall be put to death. If any pson shall Blaspheme ye name of god, the father, Sonne or Holie ghost, wth direct, ex- presse. presumptuous or high handed blasphemie, or shall curse god in ye like manner, he shall be put to death. might have been written by the great Hebrew lawgiver, as far as stern righteousness is concerned. The Body of Liberties was the first written compilation of laws in the English colonies, and shows clearly that even as early as 1641 the colonists had begun to depart from the accepted idea of the rights of indi\'idual Englishmen. In 1660 a larger set of laws was printed, covering nearly one hundred large pages. The men who codified these laws had a peculiar genius for this sort of thing, and it was very fortunate that they did their work so well. When the English seized New Amster- 222 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY dam in 1664, Richard NicoUs was sent over as governor. He found a colony containing many men who were not Dutchmen, but all the law was Dutch, and it was evidently necessary to adopt English laws after the conquest. So Nicolls changed the wording of the New England laws enough to apply to the colony of New York. Perhaps to forestall criticism for cribbing in this fashion, he called them "the Duke's Laws," after the owner of the colony, the Duke of York. In later days the Duke's Laws became the basic law for all the colonies as far south as Mason and Dixon's line. Hence we may say that the Puritans of New England set the pace for the legal devel- opment, as well as for the form of government, of the Northern Colonies. In course of time the Massachusetts Puritans The United Colonies of found that they could not shut out the rest of the New Eng- -v^orld ; as their colony grew, they came to have in- terests and dangers in common with the near-by col- onies, and these demanded mutual arrangements of some sort. The feeling that brought about the forming of the United Colo- nies of New England was perfectly natural, and the history of it is very important, for it foreshadows the development of the idea of common interests in the federal union. There were many dangers that threatened all the New England colonies in the early 1640's ; the Dutch on the south, the Indians on the west, and the French on the north were all occasionally to be dreaded, and the great stretch of coast meant fear of storm and pirates at all times. Commercial safety and general prosperity must also be considered, and the good Puritans were "canny" in this particular. Hence in 16143 the four colonies of Massachu- setts Bay, New Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut formed a confederation of a very loose form called the "United Colonies of New England." Governor Winthrop says, "... COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 223 being all desirous of union and studious of peace, they readily yielded to each other in such things as tended to the common utility, &c, so as in some two or three meetings they lovingly accorded upon these articles." Rhode Island, being the home of religious outcasts, was of course not included in the federa- tion. Winthrop tells why Maine was not admitted, in a way that shows well the character of the first New England Puri- tans, gentlemen all, stiff-necked in puritanism, lacking tolera- tion in social, religious, or political matters. "Those of Sir Ferdinando Gorge his province, beyond Pascataquack, were not received nor called into the confederation, because they ran a different course from us, both in their ministry and civil admin- istration ; for they had lately made Acomenticus [a poor vil- lage] a corporation, and had made a taylor their mayor, and had entertained one Hull, an excommunicated person and very contentious, for their minister." Some of the characteristics of this federal union are interesting to notice, on account of the form that ^^ ^^ they took later. Each of the four colonies was to Colonial be equally represented, although they differed jj^j j^^^^ much in population and wealth. The eight com- missioners were to meet twice out of five times in Boston, and then in turn at the other capitals, unless some common meeting place could be agreed upon. The powers granted to the union were not large, and they were expressed in a very general way. Runaway servants and criminals must be returned. In case of serious differences of opinion between the colonies, the commis- sioners from the other colonies were to act as a court of arbi- tration. For more than a generation this imion existed in New England, and was of the greatest possible help, for it carried these people safely through their Indian wars. The rock on which the confederation split was the inequality of its represen- 224 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY tation. The people of Massachusetts did not approve a certain decision of the commissioners, and instead of using the provisiop made for such cases, they simply refused to have anything more to do with the union unless they should feel so disposed ! Nat- urally, under these circumstances the league gradually faded away. The weakest point in the confederation was the fact that it permitted colonies to withdraw in this fashion, thus furnishing a precedent for later action of similar sort. The voluntary union of 1643 ^^.s converted into an undesired union during the time of Sir Edmund Andros. After the change of government of 1689 and the fall of Andros, came the Province Charter of 1691, which combined several smaller colonies in the "Province of Massachusetts Bay," and by its provisions made definite ground for disputes that ended in the revolution. The attempt to impose a common government on the New England colonies worked even worse havoc than their volun- tary attempt at common action in important matters. During the colonial period there were two polit- RevoUi°k)ns ^^^^ changes in England of a radical nature, both and the before 1700 and within fifty years of each other. America. ^^ ^oth of these times the colonists were accus- tomed to think of themselves as Englishmen, but that does not mean that they really were, either in fact or theory. We shall get a good deal of light on the subject if we find out what happened in the colonies in each case. The first of the two revolutions covers the last years of the reign of Charles I, ending with his execution in 1649; the immediate cause was the attempts that the king made to raise money contrary to the traditions of the English people, with other lawless acts that naturally followed. This injustice had two effects : one a great migration to the colonies, especially of the well-to- do middle class ; the other, armed hostility of Charles's political COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 225 and religious opponents. When the Civil War broke out in 1642, there were in the colonies many thousands whose sym- pathies were not with Charles since he had exiled them. The colonies did not aU act the same way under these circumstances ; in Virginia and Maryland it was necessary for Cromwell to send over his representatives to compel the two colonies to acknowl- edge the authority of Parliament. In the case of New England the people seem to have realized that the English had their hands full at home, and could not pay much attention to what was going on in America, provided that the Americans did not draw attention to themselves by any ill-timed action. So the people of New England did nothing ; as Governor Winthrop said, they omitted any reference either to king or Parliament, and so took advantage of circumstances to do as they pleased. Providence favored them ; for certain reasons Parliament did not assume the impleasant duty of compelling the New Englanders to sub- mit to parliamentary authority. These circumstances show that the colonies were vitally interested in English politics and willing to bear a part in them. For Virginia the immediate results may be de- The scribed as political friction, culminating in Bacon's Results. Rebellion. The far-reaching effects were even more impor- tant, for this imeasy feeling after 1660 served to increase the local jealousy between Virginia and Maryland, and a centiuy later this served to bring about the steps ending in the forma- tion of the Constitution of the United States. In the case of New England the effect on the disposition of the people was very important. Having had a taste of freedom, it was only natural that they should try to continue their independent life, and this feeling could hardly meet with approval in England. In 1664 a royal commission came over with a double purpose: to reduce New Amsterdam to submission ; and to try to quiet 226 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY the New Englanders and make them "more conformable." The commission failed utterly in this latter purpose, and was indeed treated with no little disrespect. The people of Boston got their forts in good shape, burnished their arms, and hid their charter. Then the Massachusetts government said that under their charter it was their duty to safeguard the rights of the people, and that it did not compel them to listen to any royal commission whatever ! This was little short of treason as far as words go, while the spirit of the words was fairly rebellious. The effect of this treatment of the royal commission was to give the Massachusetts Bay Colony a bad reputation in Eng- land. One of the best and most level-headed Englishmen of the time, John Evelyn, was on a committee of trade and plantations in 167 1, and on the day of the first meeting of the committee, he wrote in his diary, "... what we most insisted on was, to know the condition of New England, which appearing to be very inde- pendent as to their regard to Old England, or his Majesty, rich and strong as they now were, there were great debates in what style to write to them ; for the condition of that Colony was such that they were able to contest with all other Plantations about them, and there was fear of their breaking from all dependence on this nation ; . . . some of our Council were for sending them a menacing letter, which those who better understood the peevish and touchy humour of that Colony were utterly against." Ten days later he repeated the same idea, saying, "We under- stood they were a people almost upon the very brink of re- nouncing any dependence on the Crown." On August 3, 1671, Evelyn makes this record: "A full appearance at the Council. The matter in debate was, whether we should send a deputy to New England, requiring them of Massachusetts to restore such to their limits and respective possessions, as had peti- tioned the Council; this to be the open Commission only; COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 227 but, in truth, with secret instructions to inform us of the condi- tion of those colonies, and whether they were of such power, as to be able to resist his Majesty, and declare for themselves as independent of the Crown, which we were told, and which of late years made them refractory." Charles II was not a patient man, and the plan outlined above and well carried out was likely to give reason for depriving the people of Massachu- setts of their charter, and placing over them a government cal- culated to make them behave. In 1677 the agent went to New England to look Edward into matters and to gather evidence that could be Randolph, used. This time it was no royal commission backed by a fleet and an army, but a solitary man. With a curious lack of a sense of the fitness of things the agent selected by the British govern- ment for this very delicate work was the worst possible man for the job. Edward Randolph was a victim of hard luck with aU the faults of such a man, with a few 'others added. He was a "time-server," i.e. he would do anything to keep in favor with the powers or to gain money. He whined abominably, orally and on paper. He lacked tact in every possible way and invariably made enemies where he should have made friends. He could not learn by experience, but showed a most astonish- ing lack of sense in the repetition of folly. He was a faithful servant in that he carried out his instructions as he understood them, in spite of abuse and extreme hardship, and wrote number- less lengthy reports to his superiors in England. These reports make very interesting reading, Randolph's especially when we remember that the information Reports, contained therein was the only material that the British govern- ment had, in which it could place confidence. The reports show how badly biased a man's opinion may become when he looks at men and events from a narrow and partisan stand- 228 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY point. Indeed, Randolph was entirely wrong in many instances, though he probably had no intention of lying. Like most men in public life during the seventeenth century, Randolph had a violent temper, to which he gave free rein in both written and spoken language. This habit probably did not make for peace, but it added picturesqueness to his writings. It certainly did not aid in the enforcing of the laws to have the officer swear violently at the people whom he was supposed to conciliate, nor did it calm the ruffled feelings of an American to be referred to as a "pitiful mechanical wretch." It is not astonishing that Randolph collected a The Result ^ . , 7 , , , , of Ran- mass of evidence against the Massachusetts Bay doiph's Company, enough to give the royal government an excuse for taking away the charter and converting the New England colonies into royal colonies or provinces. A royal colony was ruled by a royal officer who acted at the command of the king,* with no guarantee of the rights of the people except such rights as they were supposed to have as Englishmen. We must understand two facts in this place. The first is that even by 1685 the people of the colonies and those of Great Britain had differing ideas as to what were the rights of Englishmen. The second is that rights naturally imply duties. Hence it is easily seen that if the governor sent over was a perfectly honest man, determined to do his duty to the king, he would certainly bring down a storm of popular wrath on his head, for he would expect the colonists to live up to his ideas of the duties implied by the rights. The unfortunate man caught in this predicament was Sir Edmund Andros. Was Andros It used to be the fashion to paint Andros as a a Tyrant? "gory tyrant," but since the discovery a few years ago of a great mass of his letters it is very evident that his career was full of such misunderstandings as brought on the COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 229 Revolutionary War. Andros was the type of man who had so great reverence for the crown that he behaved the fullest duty of the subject was to serve the king in all matters, to observe his laws, and to see that others obeyed them. As governor of the province of New England, Andros found that certain laws were passed by the colonists because circumstances seemed to them to demand such rules, in spite of the fact that they were entirely contrary to English law and custom. An example of such a custom was that imder which the ownership of land was recognized. In England, a most complex series of rules and regulations existed, so involved that no one under- stood them, and so encumbered with fees that no poor man could buy land, even if it were in the market. This barbarous state of affairs remained in England until the beginning of the twentieth century. Land laws, objectionable to Andros, were regarded by the colonists as essential to their existence, and so closely connected with the welfare of the colony that ruin would re- sult if Andros carried out his instructions. With his character and mission Andros could hardly do less than he did, and it does seem hard to call him a tyrant for having done his duty. At the critical time, when it seemed that the people were on the verge of rebellion, the "glorious revolution of 1689" occurred. This gave the people of Boston their excuse, and they promptly put Andros and Randolph in jail, where, according to Randolph, they suffered many things. „ Boston, Oct. 28, 89. I cannot without greife & astonishment, write you the ill Treamt Sr Edmund Andros meets with at the castle, according to ye Relation I receiued from a Gent to whom he yesterday made it known, & did see that Sr Edmund was kept in A low Room 17 foot long 9 foot broad, in which stand : 2 beddsteds, 2 stooles, a table & other their Necessaryes : & this is the whole 230 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY accomodation allowed him and Mr. Graham to reside in day & night : there is no Chimney in it, nor can be, vnlesse when they haue a fire they burn their beds : when they eate they open the doore and sett their table part out of ye Room, & not aboue two can sitt at it : it stands so low, that the Raine stands in the flower 5 or 6 inches & rises some tymes higher : 'tis built so that the Castle Walls make two sides of the Room & what Raine falls vpon them Soakes down so that 'tis alwayes very Damp. They are lockd vp at 6 at night & the Doores not opned till 8 next morning, & not 5 foot to walke in all that tyme. His seruant is not permitted to come to him to assist him in case of any accident ; & now ye winter approaches the passage betwixt Boston & ye Castle is very hazardous & vncertain : so that vnlesse ye weather favour he may want Bread & beer 5 or 6 dayes together, & vnlesse hee be speedily remoued the Cold will kill him : This has been presented by some Gent to ye Gour & Councill ; they pretend they are sorry for it, but I heare as yet of No redresse : his keepers name is Capt ffaireweather, a very strict zelott & Church member. His villany is not to be forgot : the Gour has preserued a Great stock of Rabitts vpon the Island on which the Castle is : this ffaireweather kills & destroyes them, treats his freinds with them, & has not pre- sented one to ye Gour nor suffers his own Cook to dresse his Diett for him: the Gour had vpon the Island a Milch Cow, being a very great louer of Milke ; this Cow has ffaireweather Carried to Boston for ye vse of his family, so that the Gov can by no meanes gett any milke, but insted thereof drinks water : this is another demonstration of his extraordinary pro- fession of Religion. I thanke God I haue gott me a little place in the Common Goal ; but am in danger to be stunk vp by the Goal being filld vp with poor prisoners, especially wounded men who rott & perish for want of one to dresse their wounds : COLONI.\L GOVERNMENT 23 1 from the mercyes of such cruell men Good lord deliuer us. Pray present the inclosed papers to such of your freinds as you think will read them : two or 3 to my wife if you please ; pray lett her know that I am well, & that I am Sr your most obliged freind Ed Randolph. Though this may seem a little overdrawn, and it may pain us to think that Sir Edmxmd Andros was forced to drink water when he preferred milk, there is no doubt that the people of New England hated Andros with a very deadly hatred, and were glad to get rid of him at the last. The unfortunate part of it was that they were never able to see his side of the question, or to see that there was any other side than their own. This could hardly fail to make them even rnore "peevish and touchy." Even down to 1776 there was, in the colonies, a " .'The Out- very strong feeUng of patriotism, a pride in bemg come of Englishmen, and the Revolution was a terrible shock ^^^% to the better part of the population. An English- man is always conservative ; and it takes a great deal of hard- ship, abuse, and political wrong to make him rebel against the estabhshed order of things. The New England colonists felt the difficulties of their position very keenly ; they believed that they had been tyrannically used, but one such experience was not enough to shake their allegiance to the crown of Eng- land. It was the constant repetition of the abuse of colonial confidence that at length convinced the American people that justice from England was not to be obtained, and that the only rehef from an intolerable situation was separation. Hence came the revolution of 1 775-1 783. The next shock after the Andros episode was soon to come to the northern colonists. 232 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY _ The people of New England, being English, wished Province some established form of government, legal in all ways, and suited to their circumstances ; hence some of the leading men of the colony were sent to England to obtain a new charter. These men were given quite a sum of money to use for "emergencies," but although they succeeded in obtaining a new charter, it was very far from being what they wanted. The new charter was written by William Blathwayt, who was the heart and soul of the movement in England "to secure a greater dependence of the colonies on the crown." The New Englanders found that their new charter was distinctly a back- ward step, for under its terms they had less political liberty than they had possessed under the original charter, and for certain reasons there was less opportunity for their liberties to grow. Instead of having complete control over their govern- ment, two great changes had taken place in their situation. The governor, heutenant governor, and secretary were here- after to be named by the king, and the whole machinery of justice was to be appointed by the governor, which meant, of course, by the king. The governor had complete control over the legislature, and could not only veto its laws, but could dis- miss it if its doings did not please him. The charter seemed to be fair enough, for it contained the clause: "And further Our Will and Pleasure is and Wee doe hereby for us Our Heires and Successors Grant Establish and Ordaine That all and every of the Subjects of Vs Our Heires and Successors which shall goe to and Inhabit within Our said Province and Territory and every of their Children which shall happen to be born there or on the Seas in goeing thither or returning from thence shall have and enjoy all Libertyes and Immunities of Free and naturall Subjects within any of the Dominions of Vs Our Heires and Successors to all Intents Construccons and purposes whatsoever COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 233 as if they and every of them borne within this Our Realme oi England." The governor had very expHcit instructions as to what kinds of laws he must disapprove. To make a bad matter worse, not only were these ofiGicers forced upon the people by the king, but apparently the people were expected to pay them. Here was a fruitful source of bickering. Complete good feeHng between governor and people became impossible, and the better and more conscientious a man was, the worse governor he made. When should the royal officers be paid, and how xhe Salary much? What was a suitable salary for a royal Question, governor ? Should he be paid for doing his duty, or for pleasing the colonists at the expense of his royal master? The "great and general court" held the purse strings, in accordance with EngUsh theory, and it depended entirely on them how much the governor should receive, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that the governor's salary depended on how well he be- haved, good behavior consisting in approving all the laws passed by the lower house. As for the time of payment, the governor could be paid at the beginning of the year, at the end, or on the instalment plan. To all these methods there were objections. The amounts voted for him were not the same in different years. If he were paid at the end of the year, a large sum seemed a reward for treasonable action ; a small sum, a punishment for not having been complaisant. If he were paid by instalments, his salary looked niggardly. If he were paid at the beginning of his term, the colonists felt that they would lose control over their governor ! The whole matter seemed to rest on the character of the governors. In the matter of governors New England had ^j^^ ^j^^^ the best fortune. Between 1691 and 1775 most acterofthe of the governors were men of some standing in jj^^ ^' England, many of them were gentlemen, while Governors. 234 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY the majority intended to serve the king well. Several of them secured the appointment because they thought that they had found the golden mean, and could preserve a just balance between duty toward the king and friendliness toward the Americans. However, there was perpetual bickering between governor and province over one question or another, especially the old question of finances and salaries. In spite of much threatening by the British government the people of New England refused to vote a permanent salary for their royal governor, and in the end the colonists won. This, too, was bad for the continuance of good feeling between colony and mother country. The men of New England understood English poUtical affairs well enough to know that the British government could not force them into any action that they did not wish to carry out, and that all they had to do was to stick to their arguments, and they would, without doubt, get their own way in the end. After this, the English government seems to have let the Massa- chusetts government severely alone until the unfortunate days following 1760. Friction in The people of New York never had any trouble New York. ^j(.}^ (-jjgjj. governor over the question of a salary, because his instructions allowed him to take £400 a year from the colonial treasury without any special vote, but for all that there were many chances for friction in the financial affairs in the colony. The precise standing of the colony had been in doubt until 1685, because James, Duke of York, had looked on it as his personal property, and when he became king of Eng- land, it became a crown colony, without doubt. This long period of delay, together with the misrule of the Dutch, had made New York one of the most poverty-stricken of the colo- nies. When Benjamin Fletcher became governor in 1691, he found the treasury empty, as, by the way, it usually remained. COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 23s He found the colony in a woeful state so far as defense was concerned ; the fortifications were almost in ruins, the guns were not mounted, the soldiers were in rags, and so demoraUzed from neglect that they were literally useless. He accordingly urged the assembly to provide money to repair these wrongs ; a sum was granted, but so far as the assembly could see, none of it went on to the soldiers' backs or into their stomachs. Where did it go ? The only possible conclusion seemed to be that it went into the pockets of Mr. Benjamin Fletcher. But the wor- thy governor declared most solemnly that it was not so, and that necessary expenses had eaten the money all up. No one believed him, and the assembly declared that before anything of the sort should be repeated, they would themselves examine the accounts. Ultimately Fletcher yielded, and from that time on the assembly held the whip over the governor and his ac- counts. This was merely reproducing a struggle that had gone on in England earlier in the same century. The English gov- ernment seems to have allowed this examination of accounts to go on. For the years between 1694 and 1702 the people Governor of New York were absorbed in certain political Combury. quarrels of their own, and the larger constitutional quarrel was laid aside for the time. But in 1702 the New Yorkers were unfortunately saddled with the worst of a long line of bad governors. Lord Cornbury was cousin to Queen Anne and Queen Mary, but was an utterly disreputable character, lacking decency and honesty in all matters. When he came, he found the military affairs of the colony in the same condition that Fletcher had found them ; at the same time that the assembly voted money to repair the forts, it gave him a present of two thousand pounds. With a singular lack of taste he accepted the gift and helped himself to the money that should have rebuilt 236 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY the forts. The next time the assembly met and money was to be voted, they agreed that if they appropriated money, it should be paid into the hands of a treasurer of their own choosing, and that he should be entirely responsible for the proper spending of the money. To avoid dishonesty, they provided also that their treasurer should be responsible also to the governor and council ; that is, that his accounts should be open to inspection by all concerned. Meanwhile the governor was getting money by levying extortionate fees on commerce, and by forcing mer- chants and ship captains to pay extraordinary amounts on demand. This was tyranny of the Charles I brand, and the New Yorkers did not think best to submit to it. So obstinate was the assembly in the demand for its rights that in 17 10 Parlia- ment was actually on the point of taxing New York, but political changes in England postponed the attempt half a century. The colonists of New York, like those of New England, were aware that so far as practical matters were concerned they could do as they pleased, without fear of interference from Old Eng- land. In the end the assembly of New York got the sole right to appropriate and to spend the people's money, cutting the governor and council off from any share in the financial powers of government. This is exactly what had happened in Old England. In this way was laid part of the foundation for the Revolution, for many other colonies took courage from the con- test in New York. By 1787 it was an accepted principle of government in America that money bills should originate in the lower house, and that only the direct representatives of the people have the right to spend the people's money. There are many things in the history of Pennsyl- of Events vania that are strange and inconsistent, yet they in Pennsyl- played a large part in the formation of American vania. political ideas and in the bringing on of the American COLOXIAL COVKRXMEXT '01 ^ t^V , .-' * jr^''*tf£ii '-^ ^ "* - ' — ** ^ = — - ^'- t' " ■ — = r -■ ■^ J " '. — = , ft- 'f:- -^ 1 rtji; =■! i4 ;^ = -i"T4-i Z^- ^/'l^ ^ ^'J-^t^^^ - 238 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Revolution. Penn intended his colony to be "a holy experi- ment," but its course was far from smooth. Penn and his colonists always ignored their royal charter and paid little or no attention to their obligations to the king. The colonists went still farther, and paid little or no attention to Penn and to his desires ; ingratitude would be the proper word to use. It is only fair to say that Penn set them the example, for after having made for them a "frame of government," he promptly forgot all about it himself, and seemed to remember it only when it could be used against the colonists. When the first frame was evidently past its usefulness as a curb on the people, he made another for the same purpose. Out of this chaos, however, came a written document (1701), known as the "char- ter of privileges " ; it might better be called a constitution, for it was indeed a remarkable document, and served to govern the colony down to the time of the Revolution. As a matter of fact, the Pennsylvanians troubled themselves very little about king and Parliament, and evaded, in every possible way, the authority of the English government. For example, by passing all important laws for four years and some months they evaded the requirement that their laws should be sent to England every five years for approval or disapproval. Occasionally they sent a few less important measures to England for inspection, in order to keep up appearances. The Contest One of the great troubles in Pennsylvania was that over Oaths, ^jjg Quakers could not take or administer to another any oath. This made little difference at first, when nearly all the colony were Quakers, but in the opening years of the eight- eenth century "world's people" began to come to the colony in large numbers. This made the administration of justice very diflScult, because under the English system witnesses must testify under oath, not by afftrmation, as the Quakers wished to do. In COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 239 1696 the Quakers in England had obtained an important conces- sion, in that they were allowed to testify in civil cases under affirmation, but still they could not appear in criminal cases. The people of Pennsylvania, soon after the century opened, began to make determined efforts to extend the use of the affirmation to all sorts of trials. They met determined opposition from England, but by keeping at the matter won the victory, and, after 17 18, Quakers in Pennsylvania could testify in any kind of trial by affirmation. This was really a wonderful gain for the Americans, for the inertia of English conservatism is very great indeed. A still greater victory, this time a moral victory, was in store for them. In the years from 1738 to 1776 came a generation that had not known the strife and bitterness of the revolution- early quarrels between William Penn and his cole- "y Penn- sylvanians. nists. Among these people were many, both Quakers and non-Quakers, who were cast in a larger mental mold, — men more Hberal in life and thought. One of these men was Benjamin Franklin, another was Robert Morris, another was John Dickinson, who, after writing the " Letters from a Farmer," thus aiding powerfully in bringing on the war, served as a pri- vate in the Pennsylvania Line because he thought that he did not know enough to be an officer. During this period the colony was becoming, more and more hostile to the Penn family. When the Seven Years' War was approaching, it became more and more evident that the necessities of the war could not be met under the strict Quaker doctrines of nonresistance ; the necessity of making preparations for defense was very plain, yet the Quakers could not, in conscience, vote money for such purposes. Now it happened that ever since the first days of the colony the Quakers had kept control of the assembly, although by 1756 they numbered only about one sixth of the colony. So 240 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY they considered the question and saw that their refusal to vote supplies would endanger the colony, since it would certainly bring down the vengeance of the British government on them. So the Quakers deUberately relinquished control over the Pennsyl- vania government. A little thought will show what a tremen- dous sacrifice this was ; a little thought will show the immense moral strength of men capable of doing such a thing coolly and deliberately. A little thought should have shown the govern- ment of England later on that it would be dangerous to meddle with men able to do a thing like this. But thinking was a form of exercise in which the British government of that day did not indulge. The people of Pennsylvania developed a moral perseverance that was of as great value to the colonial cause as were the constitutional victories in New York and New England, jjjg The development of the government of Virginia Changes was not political, as was the case of the Northern in Virpi Tim Colonies, but primarily social, with resulting political changes. We already know enough about the way things went in the Old Dominion to see that the tobacco situation was the key to the question of development. Of all the colonies, Vir- ginia should have been the most conservative, the most like the mother country in social structure, for the most interesting tendency in the first century of Virginia history is the growth of an aristocracy of land, very much like that of England. In time this aristocracy came to include all the government of the colony, so that Virginia threatened to become more English than England herself ! This similarity between the two should have led to sympathy between them, and might have done so if all had been well in the economic affairs of the colony. The movement known as Bacon's Rebellion was brought on by severe distress, but it seems very strange that, after that affair was over, the ruling class not only did not try to remove the conditions COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 241 «^liat had brought on the trouble, but in their greed for gain uhey seem to have increased the friction. Land in Virginia was held on a quit-rent basis; "Head that is, the holder paid a very small sum (about two ^sl»'s." cents per acre) every year as a kind of rent, instead of paying a large sum outright in the beginning. This system permitted men of small capital to begin enterprises, whereas under differ- ent economic conditions they must have stayed in England. It also had the advantage of bringing in a steady income to the colonial government, and this, with the two-shilling export tax on every hogshead of tobacco, and numerous fees and bribes, made the governor entirely independent of any grant from the House of Burgesses. The getting of a grant of land and the size of such a grant depended on influence with the colonial oflEicials, or on the bribe that one was able to offer. In law every man who brought a human being into the colony was entitled to take possession of fifty acres of land in addition to what he might take up ; this was called a "head right.'' Thus, if a man came into the colony with a family of eight, with six servants and ten slaves, he was entitled to a grant of twelve hundred and fifty acres as a bonus. This system was supposed to attract settlers of all classes, since land hunger was a disease that afflicted all Englishmen, but it tended to encourage the richer men and the larger planters, since it was these who had the means of bringing in the larger families. Some who came had influence with the government and were able to escape any possible punishment for wrong-doing. People who acquired head rights were given a certificate that they were expected to "cash in" as soon as might be. One Colonel Ludlow was ac- cused of altering his certificate calling for forty head rights, by adding a cipher at the end, thus getting control of over twenty thousand acres of land ! This institution tended to throw 242 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY the power into the hands of fewer and fewer men, as time went on. Discontent If these men had been prosperous, all might have in Virginia. gQj^g qjj ^gjj^ ijyj- trouble Came because of the low price of tobacco. When the planters found the price so low that they could hardly live, there was, of course, hard feeling of some sort. There was the impression in the colony that if England chose to remedy matters, she might easily do so. It did not make the planters feel any better to know that when tobacco was worth a penny a pound in Virginia, it was selling in England for five pence. The taxes laid so frequently, the cost of manu- facture and transportation, and the merchants' profits made up the other four pence, and the Virginians were convinced that of these the largest part went to the merchants. The financial troubles already described added to the feeling that injustice was to be expected from Great Britain. The constant repeti- tion of such troubles was enough to sap the loyalty of even the Virginia aristocracy. There seems to have been discontent at all times among the small landowners, discontent, not only with their wealthier neighbors, but with the government at home as well. In time a new element increased the discontent of the people of Virginia, something very similar to the troubles in the Northern Colonies ; this new difficulty lay in the character of the royal governors sent over in the later days of colonial life. The An account of the Carolinas has already been given, Carolinas. g^ j^g^g ^g gjjg^jj (jjscuss Only the government of those provinces. Down to 1719 the colony suffered under misrule of the worst type, and an aristocracy far worse than that of Virginia. There were no men in the Carolinas of the type of "William Byrd, of Westover in Virginia, Esquire," country gentlemen of the Sir Roger de Coverley sort, whose life was spent in the service of the public ; the Nicholas Trott type seems to COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 243 have been more common. After the people rebelled in 1719, there came a brief space when they ruled themselves, then came a royal governor. So the history of the CaroUnas was influ- enced by two elements: first, these people had had a taste of independence after as severe a dose of tyranny as people have ever experienced; second, the future of the colony depended much on the character of the royal governors. It wiU be ob- served that in the case of all these colonies their future success depended on the sort of men sent by the British government to rule the "American wilderness." In the history of the proprietary colonies one of _. jj . the most evident difficulties of the proprietor was to of a Gov- get some one to go out as deputy governor. Indeed, candidates were so scarce that often the unlucky proprietor had to send any one whom he could get, often a man most un- suitable. The story of the royal colonies is largely the same, especially after the year 1 700. The royal officers whose duty it was to select the colonial governors had very little choice in the matter. Undoubtedly there were occasionally good and con- scientious men in such places, but many of the colonial governors represented the riffraff of EngHsh society. There were several reasons for this. It was the fashion in England to talk about the "American wilderness," and the idea of privation and danger seemed inseparable from the thought of holding a governorship in the colonies. The colonies did not pay large salaries, and any EngUshman who had any income at aU at home could hardly be expected to go to America. Naturally the opportunities for "pickings" were small. Not that bribes were considered wrong, provided they were taken in moderation, but in the plan- tations almost all the bribes to be obtained came in connec- tion with illegal trade, and there were times when the taking of these might be dangerous. Thirdly, a colonial governor was 244 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY controlled by a set of instructions that gave him all sorts of trouble. When a government clerk made out such instructions, he first included all that had ever been given before, then he added such as seemed necessary to the Board of Trade. Copy- ists in those days were paid a shilling a line, equivalent to a dollar to-day, and if they could manage to spell Smith " Smythe," or French "ffrenche," or fish "ffysshe," so much the better; elaborate spelling was of advantage, and the repetition of obso- lete instructions made a long and imposing document. Thus the instructions included many directions that were hopelessly behind the times, and whenever a governor shielded himself behind this document, people were prone to believe that it was only an excuse. Hence every governor who tried to be con- scientious was sure to have all kinds of trouble with legislature and people. These instructions were made out in a purely mechanical way, without reference to the welfare of the peo- ple, and were totally out of sympathy with actual colonial con- ditions. The relation of the colony to the crown was the only thing considered, and the British colonial theory was the basis of action. Hence the colonists came to feel that their governor was a natural enemy, and that their efforts to "put him down" were well spent. All this friction, constant and wearing, was sure to be the lot of the colonial governor, and none except "broken men" or very conscientious men with the true mis- sionary spirit cared to undergo it. Of the former there are many examples. A Bad In the opening years of the eighteenth century Governor. Elias Haskett secured an appointment as governor of the Bermuda Islands, apparently because conditions in England had become uncomfortable for him. He seems to have had no money, but he was of a cheerful disposition, and he did not allow such a little matter to trouble him. He "bespoke a ship" to COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 245 carry him over, and agreed with numerous tradesmen to fit her out. He had the cabins handsomely upholstered and decorated ; he had a large supply of provisions of the finest sort put on board; everything about the ship was to be as fine as money could buy. He agreed to settle the bills for all this splendor on a certain day, which was the day the ship was to sail, though the trades- people did not know it. However, on the day agreed upon he invited all his creditors to a sumptuous banquet on board the ship, the payment of the bills to conclude the feast. On the appointed day the feast came off ; in the midst of it Mr. Haskett excused himself for a moment to get some particularly fine wine that his steward could not find. When he did not come back, his guests found that the door was locked ! Then they understood that the swaying of the ship, which they had attributed to their partially intoxicated condition, was due to the fact that the ship was making her way down the river. A hive of angry bees would be mild compared to this cabin full of outraged tradesmen, who did not understand jokes of this sort. Mr. Haskett left them to themselves for eight and forty hours, after which time they desired nothing so much as to go ashore, which he graciously permitted them to do. He might have taken them along to the colonies, however, and sold them as servants ! When Mr. Haskett reached his islands, he con- His ducted himself in a stUl more objectionable manner. Punishment. The islanders could not endure his tyranny, so they promptly put him in jail. Now it happened that the jail was an ill- drained place, and a cloud-burst occurring opportunely nearly drowned Mr. Haskett. Fortunately he was able to keep his mouth above water by dint of standing on his bed. His un- grateful people sent an account of his misdeeds to the British government, and Mr. Haskett was ordered to return to England for an examination. His people were not willing to take any 246 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY chances, but loaded him with chains, a gratuitous action on their part, and shipped him to New York. He happened to arrive there just after the Yorkers had jailed their late governor. Lord Cornbury, so of course he received scant sympathy at their hands. They forwarded him to England at the first oppor- tunity. Here, however, Elias Haskett drops out of history, and we do not know what sort of justice was meted out to him. „_ , The evil consequence of a story like this lies in Such its two effects on the colonial mind. In the first Experiences. , . , j- • ^ j ii_ 1 place, since such governors were foisted on the col- onists, they got the idea that the British government was either neglecting them, or was intentionally disregarding their inter- ests. The former was usually the case, and it did not improve the loyalty of the colonists to suffer the results of the neglect with which they were treated. The second bad effect was the disregard for authority shown in the colonists' treatment of bad officials. It was but a small step from punishing the bad offi- cials of a government to punishing the government itself. Other Chief Justice Trott of South Carolina has already Examples, ^^ggjj described. Another such official was Chidley Brooke, who was collector of the port of New York in the last decade of the seventeenth century. He made more money than the governor did, which of course was an unpardonable offense, so he was removed. This apparently did not meet with the approval of the merchants of New York, which seems to show that Chidley Brooke had made his money in bribes for shutting his eyes to illegal trading. Another such character was Lord Botetourt, who was appointed governor of Virginia in 1769. He had been engaged in a mining swindle in England, and his friends secured his appointment as colonial governor so that he might avoid the disgraceful results of his fraudulent transac- tions. This immunity was probably the reason for the ap- COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 247 pointment of many such men. It must be remembered that the bad governors that we have been considering had their effect on the political development of the colonies, and that the colonies were often rnost prosperous in a commercial sense imder a governor of no principle. The colonies that had the best governors, morally speaking, often had the most unfortunate history. Massachusetts is an example of this. Of Edmund Andros we already know something. Another such man was Governor Burnet, who quar- penences of relied with the General Court almost all the time, Massachu- setts. because he tried to Uve up to his instructions. In the years before the Revolution one of the best governors was "His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson, Esquire.'' He was per- haps the best tjrpe of colonial governor, yet he was terribly mistreated by the people, was mobbed, and was finally fairly hounded out of the colony. The vindictiveness of the people followed him to England, for when the war finally broke out, one of the first acts of the Massachusetts legislature was to confiscate the property of notorious Tories, among whom was Mr. Hutchinson. This story of misrule, lasting nearly a cen- tury, was due largely to political conditions in England. James I, Charles I, Charles II, and James II were ^j^^ the most prominent representatives of the house of Stuart Stuart. There were others following James II who * ^' occupy a romantic position in song and story, but except in the two uprisings, known in English history as the Fifteen and the Forty-five, they play no real part in history. The chief char- acteristics of the family were their poverty and their pride ; these were the causes of woes imnumbered. They tried to rule England themselves, for themselves. They did not think that this was selfish, for they beheved that in a way God had created the English people for their benefit. England and the colonies 248 INDUSTRLVL HISTORY were rich in natural products, the Stuarts were poor, there- fore why should not the Stuarts obtain money as they wished ? This did not suit the ideas of the English people at all, and, as a result, Charles I was beheaded in 1649, after a long struggle called, in England, the Civil War. Charles II, after eleven years Onic of thp. Natural Products of tki; Coi.onifs. The barrenness of the soil in New England flrovc the inhabitants to look to other things than agriculture to piece out a living. Marble for building and for lime now forms one of the great industries, and the quarrying of granite still goes on. although the owners of the Quincy quarries sold stone for the building of King's Chapel on condition that the trustees would agree not to build any steeple, lest it exhaust the supply of stone 1 in e.xile, came to the throne in 1660, the most disreputable of the later Enghsh kings. Then after him, James II, who after a short and troubled reign fled from his kingdom to a\'oid more or less imaginary dangers. Then came William and Mary, the latter being the elder daughter of James II ; then his second daughter, Anne, came to the throne at the death of William, COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 249 but she was ill-fitted to rule, and her husband was a man of no strength of character. When Anne died, there was no direct heir to the throne. For the first time the people of England had a -v^ho shall real interest in the choice of a king ; William had ^^ King? spent nearly all his Ufe in Holland, where all his interests lay, and had delegated the rule of England to certain of his friends. Anne, being a woman of no great force, had been controlled by people of her court, and when she died in 17 14, the question with every man who had wielded any influence was, "Under what king or queen shall I have the best chance to get power ? " Hence the demand seemed to be for a weak king, a man not too likely to assert himself, but willing to let others hold the reins of power. Two men stood near the throne, but there were xhe Two in each case serious objections. One claimed to be Candidates, the son of the exUed James H, but many beUeved that he had merely been smuggled into the palace as a baby and passed off as the heir of the king, in order that the wavering loyalty of the English people might be strengthened by the existence of a little prince. The son of James II was moreover a Catholic, and the majority of the people of England did not want a Catho- Hc on the throne. He was a young man of autocratic manners, and did not seem Hkely to be an humble servant to the group of men who might wish to rule through him. The second candidate was a German pr'ince, George of Han- over, descended from Elizabeth, daughter of James I, who had married Frederick of Hanover, "the Winter King." George was a curious character; he had never been very bright, and was so intemperate that he was hardly better than a beast. However, this royal sot had two great advantages as a candi- date for the throne ; he was a Protestant, and he would come 2 so INDUSTRIAL HISTORY to England to be king only on condition that he should not be bothered with affairs of state. He would sign whatever he had to, for he could write his name, but as for the rest, he must be left to his amusements. His accession would afford a splendid opportunity for ambitious politicians to seize power and to rule the kingdom as they pleased. The Choice. Then occurred the first real political struggle in England, to decide which prince should get the throne, and this first evidence of party rule in England set George of Hanover on the throne as King George I. Two more unpromising can- didates could hardly have been found, and, as frequently hap- pens, the man was chosen who was least fitted to rule. This would be a very good system if competition worked as it does in the business world, and selection depended on the candidate's ability to give good service to his supporters. Trouble comes when men begin to look on politics as a game, in which the good of the country is the last thing to be considered. It must be remembered that it was a new game in England ; the rules by which the game was to be played had not been established, and the men who got control of the king seemed to think their power as autocratic as that of the Czar of all the Russias. They had not learned that in the mistakes of the majority lie the oppor- tunities of the minority, and that the majority must consider more seriously what the minority is likely to do, than what it will do itself. The few men who controlled George I did as they saw fit without reference to any other consideration. They seem to have thought themselves so strongly intrenched in their power that no one could possibly dislodge them. The First For nearly half a century these men remained in Effect. power, and all the time the opposition to them was gaining strength and form, and was waiting its opportunity. The chance came in 1 760 with the change of government, when George COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 251 m followed his grandfather, George II, as king of England. As a young man, George III had hated these men behind the throne, and he naturally tried his best to get rid of them when he became king. George III intended to rule without any "ministers," depending on the hitherto despised Tories for advice and service. The Whigs must expect nothing but snubs. Experience soon showed George that he could not get along without ministers ; and when he came to have them they were to be Tories. The plans and theories of this Tory government were exactly opposed to those of the Whigs, who had been in power since 1715. The groups of men who ruled England after 17 15 xhe Second were not necessarily bad men, but they were inter- E*^*^*- ested for the most part in English affairs, and colonial matters did not concern them much. Only occasionally would some member of the group show interest in the New World, but, as a rule, uniform neglect on the part of the rulers was the lot of the American colonies. Under these circumstances the work of governing the colonies was left to the government clerks. These men were conscientious workers as a rule. They kept busy ; they answered letters strictly in order as they came, unless they were paid to do otherwise. They found that as time went on and the colonies became more populous and more prosperous, they fell behind in their work. They also knew that a government clerk who has the reputation of stirring up trouble is not liked, and is hkely to find himself without occupation. So they wrote the instructions for the governors, and did their best to see that these directions were carried out, but when they had done enough to satisfy their consciences, they gave up the struggle rather than stir up trouble. Hence the colonies were uniformly neg- lected dmdng the half century following 1715. Whenever some great question rose, the colonists knew perfectly well that a 252 INDUSTRIAL fflSTORY little persistence on their part was all that was needed to gain their point. They became accustomed to thinking for them- selves, and their self-reHance was so thoroughly developed that even the thought of separation from Great Britain did not daunt them very much. What happened after 1760, when England was governed by a king determined to rule, and by a political party determined to reverse the poHcies of its prede- cessors in power ? It is easy to imagine that in the colonies this change from noninterference to interference could hardly seem less than tyranny. Gr wth f During this period of uniform neglect the colonies the Colonies, had increased greatly in many ways. In population Massachusetts increased from about 90,000 in 1715 to 270,000 in 1764 ; New York increased from 30,000 to 100,000 ; Pennsylvania from 35,000 to 220,000; Virginia from 100,000 to 350,000; South Carolina from 16,000 to 125,000. All these important colonies more than tripled their population in this half century, and there were many other indications of a real increase in power. The larger the colony, the faster the rate of improvement. Its wealth became greater. Its powers of re- sistance against Indians, foreign foe, or the tyranny of England became vastly greater. Foreign commerce increased wonder- fully, and the flood of books about commerce and the illegal traflic with Europe shows that in England and America men realized the importance of this political question and the prob- ability of its proving a rock of offense. Education had advanced wonderfully in the colonies,' as usually happens when a new people attain wealth and political power. The colonies now had professional men who had been bred and educated in colonial colleges, and who were in sym- pathy with colonial conditions. There were ministers, lawyers, teachers, men of wealth, doctors, who had been trained in their COLONL\L GOVERNMENT 253 political ideas by Locke's treatises on government, and who were keenly aUve to the dangers of their position, tossed about as they were likely to be under a selfish, ignorant, and neglectful British government. Because of their growth and prosperity the colonies were "seething with discontent" when the mistaken poHcy of George III began its work. Every act of the govern- ment seemed calculated to stir up their anger. Although they had governors who tried to do right, men like PownaU and Hutchinson, these thin-skinned colonists looked only on their own side of the question. In England there was a new king, a young man _. without e.xperience, and with little intellectual English power. He was at times insane and had to hand over the power to others until he came out from under the mental cloud. He was troubled by many personal worries, by serious family sorrows, but especially by an almost empty treasury and by a great national debt, so heavy that the paying of it seemed an impossibility. His most obsequious servants were called the "King's Friends," a terrible misuse of a splendid word, for all that they cared for was to get as large bribes as possible and to get even with their pohtical enemies. It is evident that they would i.'ote as they were told, willjmilly, as long as they were paid for doing it. It seems that George III was very conscientious, and thought that his actions as king were almost divinely inspired. As a matter of fact, he was a dull observer and rarely saw things in their true light. Opposi- tion angered him, and he looked on his pohtical opponents as traitors ; when he stated a given policy, he thought that that ought to settle the matter. A thing was right and wise because the king had said it. The colonists, then, were the "kick-baU" for this royal blunderer, and unfortunately for peace they were in no mood to accept injustice meekly. 254 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Th Fail re '^^^ right time to judge of the real strength of a of the man or of a party is when stress comes ; the behavior in an emergency tells the whole story. The colo- nists saw that the English governmental system had made the colonial governments so weak that they hardly amounted to a bond with the mother country. When the days of the Revolu- tion approached, the royal governors saw the power slowly slipping away from their hands. There was nothing that they could do to stop it. George III was very glad to see such a frame of mind in the colonies, and did all that he could to help it along (as in the case of New York and Massachusetts), for he thought that lack of settled government would bring the colo- nists to their senses more quickly than force. It had just the opposite effect. Their trading had made the colonists self- reliant in a way that the British government could not realize, though it had been warned often enough of the state of affairs. So as the mantle of power slipped from the shoulders of the royal governors, it was assumed by the people themselves. Anarchy did not result, as George III had predicted, but revolution. It was not so easy to govern all the colonies as it The Prob- ^ ^ lem of was to keep order m one small locality, and the ex- Self-govern- penment of a Continental Congress did not succeed very well on account of the intense jealousy between the colonies. That body served its purpose during the day of small things, but it had so little power that it could do nothing at all but advise and request the states to act. The same may be said of the Articles of Confederation. They constitute the best document of the sort that could have been accepted at so early a date, and they served their purpose. Perhaps the best service that they rendered the people of the united colonies was the proof that they offered, that a strong government was necessary to govern successfully so many millions of people, scattered over COLONIAL GOVERNMENT 255 so long a seaboard, and even then beginning to spread westward over the mountains. The problem of forming that government was the most serious problem that faced the Americans during the period just after the Revolution. The problem of working out that government, we are stUl trying to solve. CHAPTER IX The City Problem in the United States One of our great national problems is the question Meaning of how we are to provide for the millions of our people p "hf'*^ " ^^° ^^^ constantly collecting in the centers of popu- lation that we call cities. The question is very broad, and it covers much that affects the life of every one of us. Ques- tions of education, of transportation, of public utilities, of fire protection, of food supplies, of the protection of life and property, of health, of the wise handling of our tendency toward expansion, all come under this head. The thirteenth census showed that the cities all over the United States were growing at a much faster rate than the rural districts ; indeed, in many regions the population of the rural counties actually decreased between 1900 and 1910, making the city problem all the more important to every person in the United States. It is the purpose of this chapter to study the growth of cities in our country, and to see how this problem arose. .pjjg When we go to Europe, one of the first differences Original that we notice between the Old World and our own cities is the location of the large towns on the con- tinent. Many of the most famous cities were founded centuries ago, when the first thing to be thought of was the problem of defense. The lake dwellers of prehistoric Europe built arti- ficial islands, the remains of which we find now, but prehistoric men more often selected for their homes a hummock or mound in the midst of a swamp, the more inaccessible the swamp, the 256 THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 257 better. An intricate series of stepping stones, perhaps hidden under the mud, served as an approach, and the swamp was not only a defense but a convenient place to throw the refuse of the inhabitants. So iu the course of time the oyster shells and the bones and the ashes, with other sorts of debris thrown into the swamp, made a larger village. Such were the begin- nings of London and Paris. The worst drawback to this plan was the unhealthfulness of the situation ; the air was bad, but the water was worse, for the only source of supply was the siu-face wells, from which only swamp water was to be drawn. Another form of city site was a hUl fort, sometimes an earth hiU, but usually a steep rock of great height ; Edinburgh and Athens are examples of cities of this type. Here in early times the people lived huddled together, while at the foot of the rock they had their farms or their herds. Wars and sieges, together with the fact that the soil at the foot of these "chimneys" was not likely to be fertUe, prevented these towns from increasing in numbers very fast. As wars gradually decreased and it became safe to Uve away from the top of the citadel, the city gradually spread out over the plain, but the really important buildings, such as the treasury and the temples of the gods, remained on the height. Very few of the older cities were built in exposed positions even for the sake of commercial advantages; these came later, when society had become more settled and when the art of fortification had been more fuUy developed. From the earliest times to the fifteenth century x^g l^^^ there was Httle change in the plan of these cities ; °^ Growth, they simply became larger without improving in any way. Pavements were unknown, and in time of rain the streets of London and Paris were quagmires. The streets were not sep- arated from the sidewalks, and pedestrians in the narrow ways were always in danger. Commerce was seriously impeded by 258 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY such conditions. Street lighting was unheard of, and people who were obliged to go about at night carried torches with them, or were accompanied by armed servants bearing "flambeaux." Water systems, sewerage or garbage disposal systems, were alike unknown. People threw all their refuse out of the win- dows, sometimes at a given time, as in Edinburgh, where at nine o'clock at night the cry of "gardeloo" warned passers-by to dodge into doorways to avoid the streams of refuse from the upper windows. The surface of these old cities has risen many feet during the centuries; in London, for example, the old Roman pavements are from fifteen to twenty feet below the present level of the city. Is it any wonder that terrible pesti- lences, such as the "Black Death" of 1349, found fertile fields in such cities ? Indeed, it is hard to describe the awful condi- tion of the European cities as our ancestors knew them, and many of them have continued to be as bad even until recent years. Within half a century travelers have spoken of "im- perial Rome, sitting serene on her seven hills," as so filthy that one could hardly endure the air or the sights. A good descrip- tion of such a city is found in the writings of Coleridge, who had always wanted to go to Cologne, and whose dream was at last attained. His impressions are best told in his poem: — " In Kohln, a town of monks and bones, And pavements fang'd with murderous stones. And rags, and hags, and hideous wenches ; I counted two and seventy stenches, All well defined and separate stinks! Ye Nymphs, who rule o'er sewers and sinks. The river Rhine, it is well known, Doth wash your city of Cologne ; But tell me, Nymphs! what power divine Shall henceforth wash your river Rhine ? " THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 259 Try to imagine the change from these Old World conditions to the cleanliness of the New World. Our English forefathers alwaj^ founded their new j,j. gj^^^ homes in the most convenient places. It often in the New happened that they were at first mistaken in their site and that they were obliged to change their plans. In Vir- ginia, Jamestown was planted in the most unhealthful spot on the whole Atlantic coast, and was of necessity abandoned. In South Carolina the first settlement at the mouth of the Ashley and Cooper rivers had to be moved. In Georgia we hear of the "lost towns," blotted out by the sea and the sand. Nearly all the early towns were situated near navigable water, salt or fresh, and some of the people with Old World ideas thought that they were too much exposed to attack by sea. This was the case in the Massachusetts Bay colony, where the people of Boston felt that the commonwealth that they hoped to found should have its capital farther from the sea, and in a more defensible place. So they planned the city of "New Towne," the modem Cam- bridge, and built thereabout a palisade of great logs as a forti- fication. But the colonists found that the immensity of the New World was its best protection, and that their enemies would find it difficult to attack a few struggling settlements scattered along nearly two thousand miles of seacoast. So while all the early settlers built forts, they were not really very formidable, being, for the most part, so small and out of repair that, on the rare occasions when they were attacked, they were soon obliged to surrender. The ships of those days were of shallow draft, and could go up many rivers and into many harbors that we do not now consider navigable. The Mayflower drew fourteen feet of water and was of one hundred and eighty tons burden. Probably most vessels in the colonial trade before 1700 were not much larger, though after 1700 vessels drawing three or 26o INDUSTRIAL HISTORY four feet more were in use. Since the export trade was so im- portant for the welfare of the colonists, evidently the chief thing to be thought of in the situation of a city was that it should be on navigable water. The Stages For a long time, perhaps a century, the people of Growth, of (.jjg colonies kept in coast towns, for mutual pro- tection as well as for commercial advantages, and the popu- lation did not spread very much. There were outlying farms, but as a rule the houses of the people were grouped together. The first step in expansion came when a lull in Indian troubles gave a little relief from the constant fighting ; yet within fifty years after the settlement of Boston there were still Indian up- risings within five miles of the town. Then when the spreading out of the population was well under way, the trade of the colonies began to gain in importance, and an increasing body of men became interested in commerce, although many of them owned and operated farms. As commerce gradually became larger, this body of city dwellers naturally increased, and by the time of the Revolution there were several of these seaport towns with a population of at least ten thousand. We can understand the story of all of these from the history of one. New York New York in 1628 must have been a poor place, in 1628. according to the description of the Rev. Jonas Michaelius, who wrote much about it. "Food here is scanty and poor. Fresh butter and milk are difiicult to obtain, owing to the large number of people and the small number of cattle and farmers. . . . We need nothing so much as horses and cows, and industrious workers for the building of houses and fortresses, who later could be employed in farming, in order that we may produce suflScient dairy products and crops. . . . Ten or twelve farmers, with cattle and land in proportion, would be sufficient to help us out of all difiiculties. True, this island THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 261 is the key and principal stronghold of the country, and needs to be settled first. . . . They are meanwhile beginning to biuld new houses in place of the hovels and holes (van de hutten ende oolen) in which heretofore they huddled rather than dwelt." He went on to say that labor of any kind is entirely lacking. "Some Directors and Heads, by bad management, have rather kept back than helped the country, and many among the com- mon people would have liked to make a living and even to get rich in idleness rather than by hard work, saying that they had not come to work ; that as far as working is concerned they might as well have staid at home, and that it was all one whether they did much or Uttle, if only in the service of the company. Such melancholy (dierge-lycke) expressions were the burden of the song one heard all the day long. And this sort of people are all, in course of time, reshipped home as useless ballast." This certainly shows a very poor sort of city, so poverty-stricken that it was of little value. It is curious to note the sharpness of foresight with which the old dominie saw the strategic im- portance of the island of Manhattan. At the time of the English conquest the city had sew York grown from the three himdred souls of the time of "^ '^^4- Dominie Michaelius to perhaps seven thousand, of whom one third may have been English, the rest Dutch. The settlement was on the southern end of the island, extending up the eastern side along the East River. There were farms scattered all over the island in suitable spots, and there must have been a good deal of comfort of a rural sort, although the foreign commerce seems to have been small. There were many negro slaves in the settlement, who were as a rule well treated. These Dutch colonists were a hard-working, economical race, eager to ex- pand their territory, but the repressive policy of the Dutch government, coupled with the czar 'like rule of Hardkoppig 262 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Piet, made it quite impossible for the colony to grow to the best advantage. New York According to John Miller, who in 1695 published in 169s. ]^i~ii, York Considered and Improved, the population of the city had about doubled since 1664, "As to their wealth and disposition, ye Dutch are rich & sparing, the English neither very rich nor too great husbands, the French are poor and therefore forced to be penurious : As to their way of trading & dealing they are all generally cunning and crafty but many of Ihcm not so just to their words as they should be." "... those things which I have said to be either wanting or obstructive to the haii- piness of New Yorke . . . which I count to be six isl the wick- edness & irreligion of the inhabitants. 2 want of ministers, j, difference of opinions in religion 4 a civil dissension 5 the hea- thenisme of the Indians & 6 the nieghborhood of Canida. " Miller makes New York a sad place morally and intellectually, and traces all her troubles back to the fact that the Church of Eng- land was not supreme there, and to the nearness of the French in "Canida." To his mind all her difficulties would be over- come if three things could be done: if the French could be driven from Canada; a bishop of the Church of England be established in New York; and the Indians be converted. It is amusing that all his plans for converting the Indians were based on the writing of John Eliot, as though the Iroquois Indians could be reached through writings in an Algonquin dialect ! He did not realize that it would be like a foreign tongue to them. Miller also believed heartily in witchcraft, and was much dis- pleased when the Massachusetts Bay authorities confessed the error of their ways. All things considered, John Miller thought New York greatly in need of improvement. New York In 1 744 ^ Maryland physician, Dr. Alexander in 1744- Hamilton, made a tour of the colonies, and spent THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 263 much time in New York, He describes it as a pretty place, extending a mile or more along the water front, with a very good commerce, although tlie wharves were not good. One of its chief merits to his mind lay in the fact that the ladies dressed better than those ot Philadelphia I "The people of New York, at the first appeoi'ance of a sti'aiiger, are seemingly civil and courteous, but this civility and complaisance soon relaxes if he be not eitlier highly recommended or a good toaper. To drink stoutly with the Hungarian Club, who are all bumper men, is the readiest way for a stranger to recommend himself, and a set among them oi-e very fond of making a stranger drunk .... Governor Clinton himself is a joUy toaper and gives good ex- ample." Hamilton was thoroughly disgusted with the drinking habits that he found customary tliere, and condemned them vigorously. The population of Manhattan Island probably tripled between 1695 and 1744. In 1759 and 1760 a young English clergyman, NewYork Rev. Andrew Bunmby, traveled through the col- *" 'T***' onies. He speaks of New York in tliis wise: "It contains between two and three thousand houses, and sixteen or seven- teen thousand inhabitants, is tolei-ably well built, and has several good houses. The streets lue paved, and very clean, but in general narrow ; there are two or three, indeed, wluch are spacious and airy, particularly the Broadway. The houses in this street have most of them a row of trees before them ; which form an agreeable shade, and produce a pretty eSect. The whole length of the town is something more than a mile j the breadth of it about half an one. The situation is, I believe, esteemed healthy; but it is subject to one great inconvenience, which is the wont of fresh water ; so that the inhabitants are all obliged to have it brought from springs at some distance out of town. There are several public buildings, though but few that deserve 264 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY attention. The college, when finished, will be exceedingly handsome ; it is to be built on three sides of a quadrangle, front- ing Hudson's or North River, and will be the most beautifully situated of any college, I believe, in the world. At present only one wing is finished. . . . The name of it is King's College. There are two churches in New York, the old or Trinity Church, and the new one, or St. George's Chapel ; both of them are large buildings, the former in the Gothic taste, with a spire, the other upon the model of some of the new churches in London. Besides these, there are several other places of religious worship ; namely, two Low Dutch Calvinist churches, one High Dutch ditto, one French ditto, one German Lutheran church, one Presbyterian meeting house, one Quaker ditto, one Moravian ditto, and a Jews' synagogue. There is also a very handsome charity school for sixty poor boys and girls, a good work-house, barracks for a regiment of soldiers, and one of the finest prisons I have ever seen. The court or stadt-house makes no great figure, but it is to be repaired and beautified. There is a quadrangular fort, capable of mounting sixty cannon, though at present there are, I believe, only thirty-two. Within this is the governor's palace, and underneath it a battery capable of mounting ninety- four guns, and barracks for a company or two of soldiers." This is the best and most encouraging of the pictures of New York that we have yet seen, but possibly it may not be entirely correct. Bumaby "Having traveled over so large a tract of this vast as a continent, before I bid a final farewell to it, I must beg the reader's indulgence, while I stop for a mo- ment, and as it were from the top of a high eminence, take one general retrospective look at the whole. An idea, strange as it is visionary, has entered into the minds of the generality of mankind, that empire is traveling westward ; and every one is looking forward with eager and impatient expectation to that THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 265 destined moment when America is to give law to the rest of the world. But if ever an idea was illusory and fallacious, I am fully persuaded this will be so. America is formed for happiness, but not for empire : in the course of twelve hundred miles I did not see a single object that solicited charity; but I saw insuperable causes of weak- ness, which will necessarily prevent its being a potent state. [Here he goes into geographical differences and the resulting jealousies.] . . . Indeed, it appears to me a very doubtful point, even supposing all the colonies of America to be united under one head, whether it would be possible to keep in due order and government so wide and extended an empire, the difficulties of communication, or correspondence and all other circum- stances considered . . . After all, however, supposing what I firmly believe will never take place, a permanent union or alliance of all the colonies, yet it could not be effectual, or productive of the event supposed: for such is the extent of coast settled by the American colonies that it can never be defended but by a maritime power: America must first be mistress of the sea before she can be independent, or mistress of herself. Suppose the colonies ever so populous ; suppose them capable of maintaining one hundred thousand men con- stantly in arms (a supposition in the highest degree extrava- gant), yet half a dozen frigates would with ease ravage and lay waste the whole country from end to end, without a possibility of their being able to prevent it ; the country is so intersected with rivers, rivers of such magnitude as to render it impossible to build bridges over them, that all communication is in a manner cut off. An army under such circumstances could never act to any purpose or effect; its operations would be totally frustrated." How astonished he would have been if he could have known that in a century from the time of his writ- 266 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY ing the country would commence a war in which more than two millions of men would be in arms. Though Andrew Burnaby was an intelligent, well-educated man, he could not see the future that lay before the city and the country. NewY rk ^^^ fifteen years between 1760 and 1775 saw a before the great growth in the city ; the island of Manhattan came to have nearly twenty-five thousand inhabit- ants, and its commerce was exceeded only by that of Boston. Its citizens boasted that every language used by civilized nations was heard on its streets, and people who did not like the city said that vices were similarly abundant. The drinking habits of the inhabitants had increased rather than diminished since the times of Dr. Hamilton. In spite of the fine houses and gardens that surrounded the city, the streets were ill-lighted and were so badly paved that Franklin is said to have re- marked that in Philadelphia one could tell a New Yorker by the careful way in which he shufHed over the smooth pavements of the Quaker city. During the war New York suffered much from the presence of the hostile army, and from the total stoppage of all commerce. J. Y . A very sad condition resulted from the war. after the According to Dr. Franklin the natural commerce War of the city had been entirely stopped for eight years. The population was reduced by more than a third. The natural damage that follows occupation by a foreign army is always very great, but in this case the British army treated the city as though it were a conquered province, although it was probably more than half loyal at the beginning of the war. In short, it would be twenty years, at least, before the city of New York could get back its rightful place among the cities of the coast. No doubt the jealousy that Burnaby saw so plainly made some of the other cities rejoice at the downfall THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 267 of the "city of wickedness," but this did not prevent the choice of New York as the first meeting place of the newly organized government in 1789. As late as the War of 181 2 the chief industrial Commerce mterests of the country centered around agricul- and Manu- ture. There was, of course, some manufacturing, ff^*""* ^*- . . ° Agncultuie. but it was all carried on by the method known as "household industry," that is, hand work done by various members of the family. In England the latter part of the eighteenth century saw a great change called the "industrial revolution," when many important inventions were put in operation, and the factory slowly took the place of the house- hold as the producer of manufactured goods. This change took place somewhat later in America than it did in England; perhaps not until the period of the War of 1812 did manufac- turing in a modern sense begin to be common in America. From that time on the annual value of manufactured goods began slowly to approach the annual value of agricultural products ; it took just about a century for manufactured goods to catch up to and to pass the latter. Now we must consider the changes in American city life brought about by the earlier wars. The figures of the first and the second census are The War too meager to help us at all, but it seems likely °* '^'^■ that with the search for the best lands the population must have spread out over a larger area, and that in 181 2 there was still a tendency to scatter. What we call economic changes take place, as a rule, very slowly, but when there comes a war that affects the whole life of a nation profoundly, these economic changes sometimes take place very rapidly. Changes that ordinarily cover centuries take place in a few months or years. We speak of this rapid changing of economic conditions in war 268 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY time as the "dislocation of industry," because it gives almost as cruel a shock to the business of the country as a man feels when his shoulder or thigh is dislocated. The industries that felt the greatest shock were those con- nected with shipping, the building of ships, the " carrying trade," and the fishing industries. The great number of ships lost by Americans shows the havoc wrought by Eng- land's navy. It is also true that we inflicted terrible losses on England's merchant navy, greater in proportion than those that they made us suffer. It is characteristic of the American that while he may be badly served once, without disgrace, he never allows himself to get caught a second time in the same way. It was to be expected, then, that Americans would shift their invested capital from shipping to some form of economic usefulness that was not attended with the same risk of destruction in war. A Commer- From an economic standpoint, the War of 1812 cial War. ^^g ^ desperate struggle between Napoleon and Great Britain. England was protected by the English Channel and by her fleet, so that the only way in which Napoleon could effect his purpose was to declare a ])aper blockade, with heavy penalties for breaking it. England answered these "decrees" of Napoleon by her "orders in council." The object of each was to crush the other by a sort of commercial starvation. This situation offered large profits for American ships that managed to get through the lines without being caught, al- though, with the warships of both nations watching for them, there seemed little chance of this. Very large numbers of American ships were captured. Of course in the carr)dng out of this policy, the people of the two countries suffered terribly, but the governments thought that they could afford to look on this suffering as one of the incidents of war. THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 269 One effect of this policy was to make European goods very scarce and high priced in the American markets, and this seriously disturbed the Americans, who were not directly con- cerned in the trouble between France and England. America had always depended on Great Britain for the bulk of her manu- facturod goods, and to be cut off from this source of supply was a serious shock. What could be more natural than that Americans should withdraw their capital from shipping and put it into manufacturing ? Or if they did not care for this, why should they not invest their money in new lands ? Neither of these movements was likely at that time to increase the size of cities, but the growth of manufactures would ultimately increase their size. With this sudden growth of invested capital in ^^^ manufacturing lines, there was a great difficulty Question in the fact that there were few men in the land who knew how to make tlie machinery necessary for generating steam power. There were few shops capable of turning out a steamboat shaft or a steam engine, and the question of eco- nomical fuel was a serious consideration. The apparent way out of the dilemma lay in the use of waterfalls as sources of power. But waterfalls often lay off in the wilderness, away from cities and towns ; the solution of this difficulty gives us a new reason for the selection of many of tlie city sites of the early nineteenth century. Dams might be built along the courses of many of the rivers, but this required more capital than one man or a small company could put into such a project. The days of the great corporations with immense capitalization had not yet come. Transportation, too, offered many difficulties, for the raw materials must be taken to the mills, and the finished goods must be distributed to the consumers. It is dear that as long 270 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY as the population tended to scatter, factories could not prosper. Some connecting link was needed, something that should bring together producer and consumer in a practicable way. This came with the birth of the modern industrial corporation soon after 1S25, and the beginning of railroad building about the A Sample of Destructive Lumbeeing. This dreary-looking waste is usually burned over, which clears the way for farming but destroys much of the fertility of the soil. With the loss of the porous soil, the How of water in the streams becomes uncertain, and it is no longer safe to depend on the river for power. same period ; these two facts, together with the canal and steam- boat transportation, made it possible to find a wider market and a better system of marketing. The Steam The story of the invention and adaptation of the Engine. steam engine reads like an industrial fairy tale, but its beginning is part of the industrial history of England. It is true that in the early stage of many inventions made during the period of the industrial revolution, the beginnings were developed abroad, while the improvement upon the orig- inal design was made in America. Americans brought ovei THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 271 the steam engine late in the eighteenth century, and used it for many mechanical purposes in places where fuel could be cheaply transported by water, but these engines were station- ary and of low power, running at low speed. Increasing de- mand for more powerful engines eventually produced new designs that produced greater power. In time, cheaper fuel and more effective types of engines drove out water power, and then it was possible to center the mUIs and factories in places where there was already a sufficient supply of labor. In other words, the most important thing now was not the motive power, but the labor supply. It is a striking fact that ever since the first Euro- j.^^^ q^.^^^ pean settlements in America, there has always been American the lack of hands to do the work. Wasteful haste has induced men to follow short-sighted methods, leading to the waste of our natural resources ; through lack of hands to do the work men did the work in the best way they could. The vastness of the country was not really understood in the early days, and even the wisest men did not realize a fraction of the possibilities of expansion that the future held. Even so sharp a man as Jefferson tried to be conservative, and thought that the region west of the Mississippi could never amount to much on account of its distance from the Atlantic coast. The first half of the nineteenth century saw an enormous increase in the manufacturing capabilities of the United States. The building of canals, the development of steamboat traffic, the construction of railroads, the westward extension of the popu- lated area, all these resulted in a more cosmopolitan market, and the demand for hands became all the more acute. This labor problem did not openly confront the leading men of the nation, but was rather an imdercurrent in the rising tide of progress, little recognized at the time. 272 ^ INDUSTRIAL HISTORY It is very interesting to notice that in the study How this ,.,/,, . ^ , / Demand of industrial history, sooner or later every economic Y'^ , demand of a people is answered by a supply of whatever is needed. If the manufacturing world needs a new process or a new machine, many men work ovef the problem untU sooner or later it is solved. The same mighty Power that set in motion this wonderful universe fulfills the genuine needs of a nation, setting in motion for human benefit the same law of compensation that we see in operation in the world of the plants and animals. Some countries have suffered because there is too little labor for too many hands ; others have had too little food for too many mouths. Thus by forcible means people from these countries have been made to come to the United States, and have found here the labor and the food that they could not find in the old country. The forces that sent them here varied in the different cases ; famine, religious persecution, political unrest,: or economic troubles, all are found at work sending poverty-ridden peoples to the land of oppor- tunity for the poor man. Immigration The first great immigration to the United States since 1840. came in 1846, when a terrible famine in Ireland, brought about by the blighting of the potato crop, killed mul- titudes of the Irish people and induced thousands of the younger generation to emigrate to America. Probably we obtained in this way at least four hundred thousand immigrants of a very desirable sort. Within the next ten years a further impulse was given immigration by political unrest abroad. In England there was the chartist movement ; in France a revolution ; in Germany there were severe religious, economic, and political troubles; in short, all Europe seemed to be infected by the spirit of unrest. Among the immigrants who came to the New World at this time were hundreds of thousands of Germans, THE CITY PROBLEII IN THE UNITED STATES 273 honest, God-fearing, industrious, and most appreciative of "the blessings of liberty." These people probably appreciated the real value of American institutions a good deal better than those who have always been accustomed to them, and Irish and German regiments played a brave part in the Ci\'il War. After the Ci\-il War there came a series of migrations of many peoples R.\w Material of which we must m\ke Citizens. driven to this country by economic distress, — Italians, French- Canadians, Scandinavians, Scotch, Greeks, Poles, numerous peoples from western Russia, Syrians, Hungarians. Others came, driven by religious persecution : the Armenians, and the Jews from Russia and elsewhere. Then arose the new problem of receiving and assimilating this flood of non- American material and making it really American in thought and feeling. 274 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY From the early years of American settlement men these im- have recognized that New York City possesses un- migrants usual advantages by reason of its geographical posi- tion. The best harbor between Maine and Florida, it is a natural landing for vessels of all sorts and sizes. It has become the acknowledged headquarters for foreign and do- mestic goods. This supremacy may not last forever; indeed, it is even now seriously threatened by other cities that may be able to offer better conditions for the handling of people and goods. Up to the present time, however, nearly all the Europeans coming into the United States have landed at New York, and the first solution of the problem of locating them in America must be made in New York. While immigrants are required to possess a certain sum of money before they can come into the country, still few of them come for any other purpose than to earn a living. Many of these immigrants have come from country districts in their native land, but American farming conditions are so different from- European that the new citizen has much to learn. Since the rise of scientific farm- ing in the last fifty years, it is increasingly hard for immigrants to compete with the established American system of farming. Their only safety lies in adopting some line of work in which for certain reasons they excel Americans. Truck There are two main differences between Euro- Farming, pean and American farming conditions. The farms abroad are much smaller than in this country, and great num- bers of European women work in the fields. This latter custom is probably the result of the centuries of war that the people have passed through, and of the present compulsory military service. In Europe, too, we notice the intensity of the cul- tivation, as in Belgium, where a very dense population must be supported by a small area of arable land. There the THE CITY PROBLEM EST THE UNITED STATES 275 Belds are cultivated like flower beds, even in the setting out of such field crops as wheat. We must remember that in countries where the cost of labor is only a fraction of what it is here, more intensive farming can be done than we could afford. This difference in the price of their labor always astonishes the immigrants. They understand that America is the land of opportunity, but it is hard for them to believe that here they can get two, three, or even four times their old wages. Many of these Europeans take up little plots of ground near the large cities, plots of two or three acres, and by the practice of strict economy and by working long hours, they manage to raise five or six crops a year, where Americans would raise but one or two. Of course the people engaged in this work are constantly changing their location and even their occupation, for after a while they learn the real wage conditions in America, and are no longer willing to slave eighteen hours a day for the small returns that they get. They go into some other business where the hours are better and the pay higher, though it may not be as healthful an occupation as that they have left. Economists have a short expression that tells a j^mejjcan long story, " the standard of living." This means the Standard sum of aU the necessities and comforts of Hfe that people think they must have in order to live decently. A moment's thought will show that the standard of hving varies very much in different countries and among different classes of society ; the English nobleman, the American citizen, the Australian native, the Eskimo, the Russian peasant, all have very different estimates of what they must have in order to be comfortable. America has a very high standard of living, a standard that rapidly advances and varies little. 276 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Immi nt When foreigners come here, their idea is to live and Labor as they always have lived ; the same quality in clothing and food, the same wages, the same hous- ing conditions, seem satisfactory. It is easy, then, for unscrupulous men to pick up newly arrived laborers who are ignorant of American conditions, and entrap them into sign- ing contracts for labor under what are really fraudulent terms. Take, for example, the immigrant who comes to us from the south of Italy. Even if he has no friends here who can guard him from sharpers, he thinks that he will better his condition immensely by coming to the United States. Just how he will gain he does not know. If he is a skillful farm laborer, his pay has been about forty cents a day. If he is a miner and especially handy with the pick, he has received as much as sixty cents a day. When an American contractor approaches him and offers him a contract whereby he is to receive as much as eighty-five cents a day for a term of months or even years, the poor Italian is charmed with the new country. The con- tractor has inserted a clause in the contract providing that he shall furnish food and clothing for his victim, to be paid for out of his wages at ordinary rates. Even this charge leaves the laborer a far larger net gain than he could command in the home land. So he thinks himself fortunate, until he finds out that he is really being very badly cheated. In the first place, the con- tractor is feeding him in the Italian way, on bread and maca- roni and a little sour wine, but the victim finds out that he is in a country where a poor man may eat meat. He finds out, too, that the padrone is trying in various ways to control him and his money. The average foreigner has no great respect for justice as he has seen it dispensed in his own land, and he has a way of supplementing it by private vengeance that does THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 277 not seem to him illegal. He simply metes out deserved punish- ment for personal offenses against himself. So the foreigner finds out that he can do better, Americaniz- and as soon as his contract has expired, he begins ing the the second stage in his Americanization. He finds work independently, very often as his own master. He is contented with hard conditions, for they are, after all, better than those that he has been accustomed to, and he is hard- working and economical, so that he saves money where an American would starve. But his ideas and desires are constantly growing; it takes him a long time to realize the fact that he is in the United States. Perhaps he never comprehends what the change means to him. It may even take two or three generations before the Americanizing process is carried out fully, and even then there are certain national characteristics that will never be lost. One of the characteristics of prac- tically all the different peoples who come to us is the tendency to keep together in social groups. It is this "gregarious in- stinct" that, at the present time, makes the foreigner so serious a problem in our city life. This is a natural instinct very commonly ob- ™ _ served in the animal world. Many kinds of animals garious are never seen separately, but always in groups and droves. What more natural than that the immigrant should try to keep with his kind, and should for a time try to repro- duce on a small scale the social conditions in his own country ? This, while it is natural and pleasant for the foreigner, is both dangerous and wasteful for us. It lengthens the Americanizing process and makes it more dif&cult, and it brings into our indus- trial world new problems that are very difficult for us to settle. These problems are to be found in all American cities of any size, and differ a little according to the character of the for- 278 INDUSTRIAL HISTORV eigners involved, but in the main the labor question is the same all over the country, and it always centers around the problem of cheap labor. The Labor Like all markets, the labor market is supplied Market. -^(-j^ goods of all grades, and the price depends very much upon the demand. Some grades of laborers will not do certain work. Sometimes the market is overstocked with labor, and there is so little demand for it that the price of labor goes down and much distress follows. Now the in- dustrial world has a certain demand for different grades of men. It needs a few fifty thousand dollar men, some five thousand dollar men, and so on down to the fifty-cent man and the cheapest forms of unskilled labor. The higher up in the scale of proficiency one goes, the scarcer becomes the supply of men skilled to meet the requirements. The possi- bility of a successful career is open to all Americans, for there is never a glut in the labor market among the higher grades of labor. As we go lower in the scale, the supply of workmen becomes greater, until we get to the lowest grade of all — the " unskilled laborer." It is rather hard to define this term exactly, but we might say that it usually means a man who has had no particu- lar training or who has no particular skill, and who cannot choose but take the lowest paid and most uncertain jobs. There is always a great demand for such men, while the supply seems to be unevenly distributed. Thus, while an interior city may be entirely without unskilled laborers, New York may have thousands of them out of work. So far as they are foreigners, they are usually the men and women who have come to this country so recently that they have not been assimilated, and for that reason they are more difficult to control. Those that are native-born have been kept down by laziness, ignorance, or THE CITY PROBLEM IN THE UNITED STATES 279 intemperance. Such people are disgruntled. Labor-saving machinery is constantly displacing these men, adding a further grievance to their woes, and making it harder for them to con- sider the successful man without bitterness. As our industrial conditions stand to-day, we cannot get along without a large supply of unskilled labor. We are very Ukely to judge of things by con- why poorly trast. A manufacturer or a farmer is likely to pay P«i , War. voting strength of a state, they meant the number of farmers. In the South this was not true, for, from the first, owing to the workings of the "Federal ratio," the cotton planters had a larger proportionate representation than the farmers of the North. However, the growth of agriculture in the North between 1789 and i860 was far greater than it was in the South, and as time went on, the southern states saw their greater representation in Congress disappearing. They may have been unable to recognize the evils of their own industrial system, but it was plain to them that they were losing polit- ically. This was especially true in the House of Representa- tives, where the consideration of money bills and local matters was especially important, and where there seemed to be no way to stem the growing power of the free states. In the Senate, however, where each state had equal representation, it seemed AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 315 possible to retrieve the loss by increasing the number of slave states. In this way the slave power would control enough votes to get its way about matters. This political trouble first entered our national _ life in 1787., when the "ordinance of 1787" provided Slave that slavery should never exist in the Northwest Territory. Diu"ing the time when the Constitution was under discussion the states saw this political danger. Again, during the period of growth following the War of 181 2, when freedom from fear of foreign intervention removed the weight that had been repressing the force of expansion, the South became acutely aware of the necessity of controlling as many as possible of the votes of the new states. Then followed the Missouri Com- promise, which simply postponed the final settlement of the slavery question. In 1832 the state of South Carolina made trouble, and the political prestige of the slave states received a hard blow at the hands of Andrew Jackson, who, although born south of Mason and Dixon's line, was the embodiment of the spirit of energy as seen in the westerner of his day. After 1832 we find that, with one exception, the great move- ments in the United States were confined almost entirely to the free states. Westward expansion, railroads and canals, immi- gration, discovery of gold, occupation of the Oregon country, the rise of manufacturing on a large scale, all these affected powerfully the progress of the North. The only event closely connected with the spread of slavery was the Mexican War, one of the few incidents in American history of which we are not proud. So it becomes evident that for a generation before the Civil War, the agricultural South had been laboring under an increasingly heavy load of disadvantages. The years fol- lowing 1850 saw great political unrest all over the nation. The Compromise of 1850, one of the great blunders of our 316 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY national story, brought with it further complication. The Kansas-Nebraska troubles, the Dred Scot decision, and signs of political union among non-slaveholders led certain southern leaders to choose a great national question other than slavery as an excuse for war. Was the federal union higher than the states, and could it therefore coerce them ? The great under- lying fact, however, was that the South was overburdened by her system of labor, and only heroic measures could relieve her. We must not lose sight of the fact that the generation in power Cotton Production with Small Capital. This shows what it means to farm with small capital. in i860 was in no way responsible for the conditions to which it had been born. It simply did its best in a terribly hard situation, and it is not to be wondered at that the leaders did not do the right thing. Perhaps they were hurried into the wrong course by the fear of what might be done by certain northern zealots who felt so strongly on the subject of slavery that they could not wait for the tediously long pro- cess by which Providence is working out the uplifting of the world. AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 517 It seemed as if there was to be no end to the mis- „ Effect of fortunes of the South, for the war only added the the War finishing touches to the ruin of the soil. War Aericuiture always "dislocates" industry more or less. Mr. of ttie Soutli. Lincoln believed that the most important thing was to end the war as soon as possible and then to reinstate the revolted states as full members of the Union. The shorter the war, the less damage to life and property there would _ 'ff^ »». \"\5 \ ' ' " V^'^^^H Kl I^M L'.^(UBSi^H' Modern Methods in the Corn-belt. Contrast this with the picture on the opposite page. Tliis means farming with enoug capital, which makes possible large profits. be, for disease did far more harm than bullets. Mr. Lincoln realized that the South was exhausted in e\'ery particular, but he could not have understood how complete would be the paralysis of the industrial life of the South when the fighting should be over. Not only did the operations of war destroy property, but the slaves, the part of the planter's capital that was most in danger, were not of much use, and the land re- mained out of cultivation for so long that much of it returned to the wild state. Skillful agriculture was the only means by 3l8 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY which the South could regain her prosperity, but this called for large capital, and in this matter of capital the South was worse off than other regions, because a very large part of her wealth, perhaps nine tenths, had been invested in slaves, and these of course could no longer be considered capital. Hence the South was really worse off than if she were beginning her existence anew. Congress, impressed as it was with the foolish fear that the South was planning further trouble, did not in the least help the process of building up the destroyed agricultural re- sources of the conquered region. It is only within the last twenty years that the real "regeneration of the South" has come. ^^ ^^ At first sight, the agricultural interests of the The Effect of the War North should have been seriously damaged by the ACTicuiture ^^^' since SO large a proportion of the northern of the soldiers came from the field, while in the South the actual workman, the slave, did not enlist, though several of the southern leaders recommended that negro regiments be formed. War always creates higher prices, especially for the necessities of life, and in a war where the available food producers were lessened as much as they were in the North, there was a great demand for foodstuffs, even greater than would naturally have been expected. The only possible solution of the question was that such farmers as were still in the business should produce a greater amount, and this meant the increased use of farm machinery, with more care in the cultivation of crops. This gave an impetus to the manufacture of all sorts of labor-saving appliances that would lessen the cost of raising food, and at the same time increase the yield. In the years after the war, when indus- trial life settled down again and capital was seeking invest- ment along new lines, the country saw a new opportunity AGRICULTURE EST THE NDSTETEENTH CENTURY 319 in this . direction, and for this reason the United States has taken the lead among the nations of the world in the produc- tion on a large scale of agricultural machinery. . In spite of the labor situation during the war the production of food- stuffs actually increased between 1861 and 1865, because the farmer could buy machines of greater efficiency, and although the price was of necessity very high, agriculture prospered. The northern farmer, however, had stiU other troubles to deal with. An essential to the western farmer was the rail- The road ; he could neither market his product nor buy Farmer his supplies without its services. Down to the time ^°'' ""^ '^'^ Railroad. of the Civil War there were no large systems of rail- roads, such as there are to-day. The small lines were only beginning to consolidate, and the completion of the first long Une across the continent gave its projectors a great deal of power in the agricultural world, for the granting of through rates became possible, and there were no laws at that time regu- lating the powers of the railroad in this particular. The grant to the Union Pacific consisted of certain alternate sections along the line, which, with the land grants to other railroad corporations, came to the astonishing total of two hundred and eighty thousand square mUes, or an area nearly as large as the old Northwest Territory. Most of this was desirable land. There were several ways in which unscrupulous raUroad offi- cials could overreach the government. By fraudulent surveys, the raOroad sections could be made to include the water privi- leges, and in a sparsely watered country, cattle raising could not be carried on without such privileges. By similar frauds, lands rich in minerals could be made to fall within the railroad tract. Lastly, the railroads could forward the sale of their own lands at a good price and shut the government land out 320 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY of the market by offering lower freight rates or by giving re- bates to those who purchased its lands. These, of course, were unjust advantages, but they introduce us to one of the most important questions of our twentieth-century domestic pohcy, the question of the regulation of freight rates. Railr ad "^^^ ^^^ regards a railroad as a common carrier. Rates in " Common carriers are those persons who under- take to carry goods generally, and for all persons indifferently, for hire." There are two ways of looking at railroad rates, from the standpoints of the shipper and of the investor. The shipper wants as low rates as possible, the in- vestor wants as high returns as possible; hence it is evident that some mean must be found, or gross injustice will be done one of the parties. Undoubtedly the railroad does a valuable service to the public, to farmers, and to manufacturers. In- deed, we are now so dependent on the steam road that we could not possibly get along without some such form of trans- portation, but the point of the matter is this : we grant valu- able privileges to railroads to enable them to operate to good advantage, and neither we nor the roads should forget that they are public servants, owing a debt of thanks to the com- munity in which they operate, and bound to serve it. They are not to become its masters. Certainly the road has a right to make such charges as will enable it to exist and to make a lawful return to those who finance it, but exorbitant rates and profits are alike wrong. The vexed question lies in the deter- mination of the rate needful to enable the railroad to run on a profitable scale, and it is difficult to determine who shall be the judge of this. Because of certain cases, like that of the Credit Mobilier and the wrecking of the Erie Railroad, the public unfortunately got the idea that dishonesty and large railroad operations were inseparable, and much injustice and AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 321 hard feeling on both sides resulted. At the present time most states have "railroad commissions," which deal with roads and rates within the state ; we have also a federal body, the Inter- state Commerce Commission, a body that might accomplish great good, but which so far has not been able to do all that its projectors hoped. It is dif&cult to realize that fifty years ago there was hardly any law regarding railroads, and that the immense body of law relating to transportation has grown up since the Civil War. With the expansion of railroads and rail- road building, it became clear that something must be done to curb the action of the roads in giving special rates to certain places and persons. Just after the war an organization known as the „. "Patrons of Husbandry" was formed, with the Granger purpose of improving the social and financial life of the American farmer. It is commonly known as the "Grange," and the movement for the regulation of rates in which that organization took the leading pait is known as the "Granger movement." In what were then the northwest states, which were almost entirely grain-produciag, there was great complaint against the roads because of the unfair rates and the way in which they were determined. There was much to be said on both sides of this dispute. The farmers were producing immense crops of grain, crops so large that the rail- roads with their poor equipment were unable to move them, and the price of the product was so low that even a moderate rate seemed to the farmer more than he could pay. The rail- roads were suflEering from overcapitalization, and were strug- gling to pay dividends so that they might carry on the exten- sions that they planned, and if they lowered their rates, it would not only force them to stop all extensions, but would also force them to operate at a loss, which they could not do. There had 322 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY been so many fraudulent transactions in the formation of rail- road companies that people in general took no stock in the mournful complaints of the raUroads, but thought that their projectors were becoming rich on unjust freight charges. The Grangers took up the fight in the legislatures of the grain states, and forced through certain laws regulating rates and adjusting the rate question. The roads retaliated in various ways, and in a few years were able to secure the repeal of those laws. But the movement did not, by any means, fail of its effect for all that, because in 1876, and the years thereafter, test cases involving these laws were taken to the Supreme Court of the United States, and the court sustained the laws. Thus was established the right of a state to regulate railroads and railroad rates within its own borders. This was in itself a victory for the farmers, for it showed the railroad power the political effect of the agricultural vote, and the necessity of being fair, if the roads wished to keep their valuable privileges. Later agitation has gone still farther along the line of the regu- lation of passenger as well as freight charges. In the passenger service has arisen the question as to whether the roads can \fford to get along with the rate of two cents per mile, now charged by law in many states. In freight circles the points in dispute are discrimination, rebates, and differential charges, and such vexatious questions as the difference between the "long haul" and the "short haul." The Rise '^^^ ^^° parts of the nineteenth century show a in Standard great difference in the manner of life of the farmer. In the first part of the century the American farmer was stiU largely self-sufiicing ; his farm produced nearly all that he and his family needed, and the outside wants of the family were very moderate. The Civil War forms the dividing line. The building of railroads and the increasing steam navi- AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 323 gation not only brought to us many goods that we could not have had before, but it brought the market nearer and helped us to sell our products to better advantage. This movement is stiU advancing, and at the present time the standard of liv- ing for the farmer is much higher than it was fifty or even twenty-five years ago. Life has become far more pleasant and a good deal more profitable, but the finances of the farmer have become compHcated with national questions of politics and finance in a way that never bothered him in the days when he supplied himself with all that he needed. Then, too, in the last fifty years the United States has taken her place as a world power, not only politically, but in a commercial sense, for at present the value of the goods imported into the United States each year is about two bUlion dollars, whUe the exports amount to considerably more. The price of all goods in com- mon use wiU therefore be more or less affected by foreign con- ditions. The manufacturing population of the country must be fed, and most of the food, at least in its The De- ' pendence raw state, must come from the farmers ; however, of Manu- a httle thought will show us that a great many Agriculture, important industries are also dependent for their raw materials on those who till the soil of the United States or of some foreign country. Examples of these industries are : textUe industries using cotton, wool, flax, or hemp, the boot and shoe industry, the meat business, the canning interests, beet or cane sugar, tea and cofiee, spirituous and malt liquors, industries using grain, such as the manufacture of breakfast foods and coffee substitutes, the tobacco business, and the handling of dairy products. The annual value of these products amoimts at the present time to about one half the total value of all the manufactured products of the country. 324 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY So the food for all and the raw materials for one half of the workers in factories are vitally affected by everything that afifects the prosperity of agriculture. It also happens that agricultural workers of all grades are even more vitally touched by the financial considerations that affect these industries, especially by tariff duties and the changes that from time to time take place in them. Origin of Until after the War of 181 2 agriculture was the our Tariff principal industry of the land, with commerce second and manufacture carried on in only a very small way. It was natural, then, that the country as a whole should dislike any import duty on manufactured goods, since, while it might bring in money for the government, it increased the price of goods to the consumer. It was a little unfortunate that when the War of 181 2 made it possible for Americans to go into manufacturing, the beginnings of this industry should have been in the East, and should not have been equally divided between the East, West, and South. The people of the East were mechanically inclined; the rough pioneer life was for them a thing of the past, and they began to see that in agricul- ture they could not compete with the virgin lands of the West. They had the necessary power in the numerous waterfalls, and there was a plentiful supply of free labor at hand to use in the business. This unfortunately introduced the sectional feeling into the tariff dispute, which henceforth became one of the important national questions. There was a section in the East increas- ingly given over to manufacturing, while all the rest of the country had to buy its supplies of manufactured goods either in the East or abroad. This manufacturing nucleus slowly spread westward and, after the period of reconstruction, south- ward, so that at the present time there is more or less manu- AGRICULTURE IN THE NESTETEENTH CENTURY 325 facturing in every section of the country. In the first half oi the nineteenth century, however, the feeUng between the manufacturing section and the agricultural region nearly in- volved the country in war. During the three years immediately after the War of 1 81 2 land and farm products had a higher ^^*°'s value than was natural, owing to the stimulating up to the effects of foreign demand along certain lines and jg-^ ° of migrations within our country. At the same time industrial enterprises that had grown up during the war found themselves in trouble, because they were not yet able to compete with foreign manufacturers. Hence came two de- mands that have largely colored our politics ever since, a de- mand on the part of the farmers for a home market, and on the part of the manufacturers for protection until they could stand alone. It seemed to the farmers that protection to the manufacturer would bring them the home market they wanted, so on this occasion they united with the manufacturers in the demand for a gradual increase in the rate of import duties during the ten years after the War of 1812. Opposition to this demand came from people engaged in the import trade who thought that the heavy protective duties would spoil their business, from the South, where the higher price of manufac- tured goods would be keenly felt, and from certain manufac- turers who used protected raw materials, and who therefore feared loss in competition with foreign manufacturers of similar goods. Hence it will be seen that while a geographical division of the country over the tariff was appearing, there was no political alignment as yet. As the year 1828 approached, the agitation for heavy pro- tective duties centered around the textile materials, with wool as the most important, and cotton, flax, and hemp following. 326 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Naturally the question came to interest manufacturers es- pecially. So, in the period just before 1828, politics entered into the tariff question for the first time, for the followers of Jackson (Democrats) averred that the Adams men (Whigs) and the influence of New England were behind the protective movement. This identifying of the pro-tariff party with New England and the Whigs would certainly be followed by the connection of the West with the anti-tariff people. When a highly protective tariff bill was passed in 1828, no one liked it. Political trickery brought the bill into existence, but the fact was that duties were to be so high that all parties were dis- satisfied; the only sections of the country that could find any comfort in it were the agricultural West, where the protection given wool and hemp was popular, and the manufacturing East, where the wool manufacturers saw a small ray of light. In the agricultural South the opposition to the bUl was very bitter. Since the whole country wished a revision of this law, what form would it take ? The Tariff "^^^ greatest opposition to the law of 1828 had of 1832 come from the South ; the high rates on various ^ ■ classes of goods raised the prices not only of those goods but of other commodities also, and the agricultural South, saddled with the weight of slavery, was falling so far behind the North that the burden was felt more severely than could be realized in other parts of the land. The agricultural West was slowly losing interest in the home market idea, and consequently was out of sympathy with protection. It was inclined to join the ranks of the "stand-patters," who did not care for any great changes either way. When the tariff act of 1832 was passed, the duties laid under its provisions were moder- ate compared to those of the act of 1828, but the southern leaders determined to make opposition to it a matter of AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 327 principle, for if such an act should be passed, they were afraid that protection would become a permanent part of the policy of the country, and they saw themselves under great disad- vantages if this should occur. Then followed the nullification act in South Carolina, with Mr. Jackson's vigorous enforcement of the sovereignty of the United States. There was some sympathy for South Carolina elsewhere in the South, though no other state joined in for- cible protest, but it was thought wise by the government to make some kind of compromise, considering that so large a section, devoted entirely to agriculture, felt so badly aggrieved. So the tariff act of 1833 was passed, providing that during a period of ten years the rates should slowly be reduced to the point where they were just after the War of 181 2. It was thought that in this way the country at large would be able to adjust itself to the coming changes, and there would be no trouble over prices and values. However, this compromise bill did not do very much good, for it did not remove the cause of the trouble, namely, an impossible agricultural system in the South. Constantly putting off the remedy simply made mat- ters worse in the section where the trouble lay. During this period of twenty years the North xhe Tariff, (east and west) went through a time of great develop- 1842-1861. ment and prosperity, with occasional slight halts in progress, but conditions in the South were widening the chasm between North and South. In the manufacturing part of the country the movement of consolidation among small industries began, and the rapid invention of machinery of great importance to our industrial life gave a powerful impetus to both manu- factures and agriculture. Transportation also improved won- derfully ; this period saw a great extension of railroads, and the consequent rise in land values, with a broadening market, in- 328 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY fluenced powerfully the American farmer. It made it possible for him to secure more help from among the thousands of Irish and Germans who were coming to this country, and the promise of a larger market gave him confidence to strike out into new fields. As was natural, the farmer became less interested in the tariff, since he had other more vital issues to attend to. The tariff acts passed during this period have very little to do with agricultural conditions. In England during this time one of the greatest movements for the good of all classes was going on, a movement known to us as the repeal of the corn laws; this affected vitally the living conditions of the whole English people. Our next problem is to see in what way the tariffs of the Civil War period were influenced by the farmers and their interests. During the Civil War a number of tariff acts were Tari^" passed, levying very high duties on imported goods. and their There was little objection to these la^'S while the Agriculture. "^^^ lasted, for people understood the necessity of raising large sums to meet the expense of the war. But after the war there was no longer the same .necessity for heavy duties, and the West, that is, the agricultural section, was seriously hurt by the high prices prevailing as a result of the heavy duties. It happened that for nearly ten years after the war the agricultural interests of the country were in very bad shape, and were therefore ill able to bear any extra burden. Prices of foodstuffs were high during the war, but fell rapidly after 1865, and transportation facilities were comparatively poor. Thus there came in the West a constantly increasing demand for tariff reform, a movement that is still powerful, and plays a very important part in national politics, since "the West " is so much larger and so much more powerful politically now than it has been hitherto. The movement has been com- AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 329 plicated with other questions, and will come up in connection with the discussion of them. One of the best examples of this complication of xhe Tariff interests is found in the high import duty on wool °° '^°°^- and woolen goods. There are three parties interested in this: the manufacturer, the consumer, and the producer (the farmer) . The manufacturer wishes for a high duty and as much protec- tion as he can get. The consumer opposes this, because it makes commodities cost more. The farmer is in a quandary, because whUe it makes it possible for him to sell his wool at a higher price, still he has to pay more not only for his clothes but for many other things, on account of the existence of the protective system. The people of the West seem to be strongly of the opinion that in the long run they would be better oS if the duty on wool were lowered, or if there were no duty on its importation. This question of the free importation of wool, or, as it is commonly called, the revision of "schedule K,'' is actively discussed in political circles, but is prevented from becoming a t3^icaUy sectional question by the fact that very few American farmers devote their whole attention to sheep raising, but a great many raise a few sheep as a side line, and so do not form a distinct class in a definite region. Another ques- tion that is stUl undecided, and that shows well the interrela- tion of interests, is the connection between the farmers and the sugar question. A good example of the importance of the tariff. The Sugar politically and economically, is seen in the clauses Bounty, in the tariff act of 1890 relating to the sugar industry. There had been for a number of years a duty on imported raw sugars amoimting to two cents a pound. This was supposed to be a revenue duty ; it taxed the people at large for the support of the government, each person paying a tax of two cents for each 330 ESTDUSTRIAL HISTORY pound of sugar he bought. Although a small tax, it yielded a return of over fifty million dollars a year. Though most people looked at it as a revenue tax, the Louisiana farmers regarded it as a protective duty; these people were entirely given over to sugar raising, yet they produced only one tenth of the amount used every year in the United States. The sugar raised in the near-by islands could be produced so cheaply that if it had come in free of duty, the Louisiana planters must have been driven out of business, and this would have affected very seriously the prosperity of the whole state. This situation put the party leaders in a quandary ; they were anxious to pay some attention to the western demand for tariff reduction in a way that would be a good advertisement; for certain reasons it seemed best to use the duty on sugar for this purpose. But how would a reduction in the duty affect the Louisiana farmers ? This trouble could be avoided by pay- ing them a bounty of two cents for every pound of raw sugar they produced, which would make up to them the loss that would otherwise have come through the lowering of the duty. There were two other political elements that entered into this question. One was the beet sugar question, the other the problem of the Hawaiian Islands. Beet Sugar. It is to be remembered in this matter of the sugar bounty that the only part of the country directly affected was Louisiana. At that time another sugar-producing industry was just beginning in the country, the raising of the sugar beet. Although there were climatic conditions that confined this industry to certain regions, the production was not nearly so restricted as in the case of cane sugar. The importance of this new branch of the sugar business may be seen when we remem- ber that it is barely a hundred years since the attempt was first made to extract sugar from the beet, and that at the AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY ;.n present time about two thirds of the total sugar crop of the world is made from sugar beets. The principal reciuirements are a certain kind of soil, plent}' of moisture until the plant is well grown, then plenty of sunshine during the period of ma- turity. If the latter is lacking, the beet will contain a small amount of sugar, and the profits on the crop will be accordingly less. Conditions that furnish these requirements are to be Notice that while sugar cane is raised almost exclusively in the torrid zone, the sugar beet is raised throughout a wide range of the temperate zone. Yet the regions in which the sugar beets are raised are as yet rather limited. found in certain of the central states and in some of the west- ern valleys ; consequently any discussion of the influence of the sugar duty on national politics includes all these states. From a problem that concerned only one small region, the sugar question has grown to be a very important matter, since it affects one of the necessities of life and the prosperity of a large agricultural area. The question of the duty on sugar is also con- nected with the relations between the United States Hawaiian and the Hawaiian Islands. Our interest in the Islands. INDUSTRIAL HISTORY islands has ahvays been deep, as seen in missionary efforts and Ihe commercial dealings of tlie islands with the States as nearest neighbors. The native islander was always easy- going and indolent, and all the enterprise and industry of the group c\-entually came into the hands of foreigners, — Germans, English, and Americans. These men had complete control .; v-fl^^' aX"' '/ V1/7V Cf'TTiNG Sl'gar Cane. Wiien wc consider the hani i :i!)or in the broiling sun. arrrl with it tjic [act that people in the torriil zinie are not as cnuri^el ic as we are, it is no wonder that tlie lalior problem in the sugar region is difficult to S(jl\'e. over the commerce, but had little influence over the politics of the kingdom. Since the islands ctjnsidered the United States as their natural market, it was very necessary that commercial treaties should protect the chief source of income, sugar raising. This the foreign element was able to bring about in 1875, 3^nd f'"" fifteen years the Hawaiian planters made fine profits, because while their raw sugar was imported free AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 333 into the United States, they got the benefit of the high price that prevailed as a result of the duty paid on other imported sugar. The planters were able to make great fortunes during these years, for they had their own refineries on the Pacific coast, and had a practical monopoly of the trade of the region west of the Rockies. But in 1890 their troubles began. One difficulty was the labor question, for the native Hawaiian was not industrious enough for the purpose, and the owners of large plantations were obliged to bring "coolie" laborers from a distance at great expense, which of course cut into the profits. The worst trouble was the tariff act of 1890, by the terms of which the import duty was done away with, and the compen- sating bounty of two cents per pound was given to men who produced raw sugar in the United States. This made so great a difference to the islanders that they claimed to be almost ruined, because, being out of the States, they could not get the benefit of the bounty. Then followed the series of events by which the foreign element in Hawaii rebelled against the native queen and attempted to become a part of the United States. However, they could not carry oiit this annexation plan until the Spanish-American War showed us the necessity of controlling those islands situated just at our door, and directly between ourselves and our new island possessions. It was not until 1900 that the Hawaiian Islands became an essential part of the United States. A question of similar import arose over the ad- . . . . mission of sugar and other products from the island of Com- of Porto Rico, products that might possibly be f^g^^ island taxed on entering the United States. The Con- Depend- encies, stitution of the United States says that " all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States" ; consequently if Porto Rico were a part of the 334 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY United States, we could not lay duties on goods produced there and brought here. Great opposition to the free admission of sugar came from the beet-sugar producers, who argued that, with the warm climate and the cheap labor, cane sugar grown in Porto Rico would undersell American-grown beet sugar, even with the addition of the small amount to be paid as freight to this country. Although we now have almost free trade with Porto Rico this question has not been fully settled, on account of the jealousy of our agricultural interests. Still other troubles have resulted from the attitude of the American tobacco growers toward the importation of unwrought tobacco from our island dependencies. ^jjg The raising of tobacco has played a prominent Tobacco part in our history. We already know that in colonial days it was the chief crop in the northerly section of the southern states, and that after the Revolution very little could be raised in that belt on account of the ex- haustion of the soil. It was only as new lands could be found, or new varieties of the plant could be adapted to more northerly regions, that the supply could be kept up. Lands in southern New England and in the Northwest Territory were found capable of raising tobacco, and intensive cultivation, with free labor and a proper rotation of crops, made it possible to use the same land through long periods. This might have made a profitable industry, but on account of the nature of the plant, the great care called for in its cultivation, its insect enemies, the necessity for careful curing, and the risks of handling and transportation, the average tobacco grower is fortunate if through a long period of years he makes both ends meet. Under American conditions there is great profit to be made in the manufacture of the raw product, but the grower feels that he must have all possible consideration if he is to live. AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 335 336 INDUSTRIAL HISTORY Consequently when the Spanish War brought us certain island possessions where tobacco could be raised far more cheaply than our own farmers could produce it, it was only natural that all the political influence of our agricultural interests should be thrown against the free importation of tobacco from the Philip- pine and other islands. Although the islands were in very bad industrial condition, the best that could be obtained for them at first was remission of 25 per cent of the duty. At the present time the Philippines are allowed to send to the United States each year a certain number of cigars, duty free. This problem will be cleared up in time ; it is by no means unlikely that at a date not very far in the future the tobacco of the Philippines will be really needed in the United States, on ac- count of the inability or unwillingness of the American farmer to produce enough. As one industry after another proves to be unprofitable, people find out new ways of using their capital. In the course of such changes the industrial hardships of our island dependencies will be relieved. Agriculture ^^ ^^^ Constantly brought face to face with the and Educa- fact that almost all the progress of the world has taken place within a very few years. The Cru- saders of the Middle Ages, and the English soldiers who fought the great battles of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt had pro- gressed no farther in military science than had the soldiers of the legions of imperial Rome. The peasantry of Europe in the seventeenth century were not as far advanced as were the market gardeners who supplied the tables of the wealthy Romans 1500 years before. When George Washington was President, interest in agriculture was just beginning to appear. Mr. Washington himself, as his letters show, was experimenting with new crops, and was studying the rotation of crops on dif- ferent soils. In one of his last messages to Congress he urged AGRICULTURE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 337 on that body the wisdom of creating a part of the government to care for agricultural interests and to extend the study of the science. Yet the plow of Mr. Washington's time was little better than the crooked stick of the savage, and Mr. Washing- ton had no idea of the chemistry of soUs, or of the real reasons for the results that he obtained in his experiments. The national government paid no attention to his suggestions until 1862 when the department of agriculture was organized. At the same time the government provided for the establish- ment in each state of schools of college grade for the scientific study of agriculture and for the training of farmers in all things pertaining to their profession. An addition to this came in 1887, when the national government provided funds for the establish- ment of agricultural experiment stations in connection with the colleges already established. At a later date the allowance to each state was raised to $50,000 per year. It would be hard to overestimate the value of these stations and schools to agri- cultural education, for they are largely responsible for the tre- mendous advance in the agricultural methods of the American farmers in the last forty years. In truth, the work of the department of agriculture, though not occupying a prominent place in the public notice, has become one of the wonders of our government. The department has introduced into the older ^ , , , What the parts of the country new crops, new methods. Department appreciation of the value of new tools and com- of A^"