and malarial coast country could not be cultivated by Euro- Winsor, Narr. and peans. George Whitefield, the eminent evangelist, supported Crit. Hist. their petition on the ground that slavery was the best means America, to raise the Africans from barbarism to civilization. The V, 376, 387blacks did, indeed, learn the English language and adopt 388. the Christian religion, and they were trained to useful labor; but the influence of the system was none the less demoralizing for owner and slave. The social dangers involved in bringing thousands of untutored savages of a wholly alien race to work in gangs under hired overseers, were very grave. A serious slave insurrection broke out in South Docs. Col. Carolina (1721), and the Board of Trade urged the governor Hist. N.Y., to devise some law for encouraging the importation of white servants. The Scarcity of Money V, 610. Bullock, Hist. U.S., Pt. I, Ch. III. Once "seated" upon the land it was not difficult for an industrious community to provide shelter and food and coarse clothing, but all luxuries and many of the necessities, such as iron implements and other manufactures, must be imported from across the water. To pay for such commodities was difficult. Fortunate was the colony for whose products there was a market in England. Gold and silver coin was always acceptable to foreign creditors, but of this there was little in circulation. The specie brought over by incoming colonists was soon returned in payment of debts, and there was as yet no mining of the precious metals. The main source of supply was the Spanish colonies, notably the West Indies, whence silver might be had in exchange for lumber and salt fish. Several of the colonial governments established mints in the hope of providing a specie currency. For thirty-six years (1652-1688) Massachusetts coined the "pine-tree" shillings. They contained Eggleston, but seventy-eight per cent of the silver required in an English shilling, but even this depreciated coin was exported. Colonies. For the purpose of local traffic certain staple commodities were used as the medium of exchange, corn, cattle, and beaver skins in the northern colonies, tobacco in Virginia Sumner, Hist. Am. II-14. Commerce in the Ripley, Hist. of Virg., Bradford, 281-283. Bullock, Pt. I, Ch. II. and Maryland, rice and hides in the Carolinas and in Georgia, bullets along the frontier. The several colonial governments authorized the practice and undertook to fix the specie value of these commodity moneys. The General Court of Massachusetts (1640) set the value of Indian corn at four shillings a bushel, that of rye at five shillings, that of wheat at six. In Virginia warehouses were established for the storing of tobacco, and certificates of deposit were issued that served the purposes of local trade. The value of tobacco fluctuated from year to year. The government attempted to limit production and, failing this, was forced to buy up and burn an extra heavy crop in order that the surplus might not depress prices unduly. The colonists found the natives using a shell money called wampum, and this admirably served the purposes of Indian trade. So long as wampum might be exchanged for beaver skins, it passed as money among the whites, and it was used throughout the seventeenth century all along the Atlantic coast. The disappearance of the Indian tribes destroyed its purchasing power. PENN'S WAMPUM BELT CHAPTER III INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT UNDER BRITISH CONTROL Agriculture I, 122, 190-191. THE men who came to the English colonies, whether gentlemen or paupers, proprietors or indentured servants, were under the common necessity of providing themselves with food, clothing, and shelter. The first settlers were everywhere farmers, since the necessities of life must be had from the soil. How easily an able-bodied, intelligent man could make a living in America, we are told by a contemporary observer. "It is common to see men demand and American have grants of land who have no substance to fix themselves Husbandry, further than cash for the fees of taking up the land; a gun, some powder and shot, a few tools, and a plough; they maintain themselves the first year, like Indians, with their guns, and nets; and afterwards by the same means with the assistance of their lands; the labour of their farms they perform themselves, even to being their own carpenters and smiths; by this means, people who may be said to have no fortunes, are enabled to live, and in a few years to maintain themselves and families comfortably." "The progress of their work is this; they fix upon the spot where they intend to build the house, and before they begin it, get ready a field for an orchard, planting it immediately with apples chiefly, and some pears, cherries and peaches. This they secure by an enclosure, then they plant a piece for the garden; and as soon as these works are done, they begin their house: some are built by the countrymen without any assistance, but these are generally very bad hovels; the common way is to agree with a carpenter and mason for so many days work, and the countryman to serve them as a labourer, which, with a few irons and other articles he cannot make, is the whole expense: many a house is built for less than £20. As soon as this work is over, which may be in a month or six weeks, he falls to work on a field of corn, doing all the hand labour of it, and, from not being able to buy horses, pays a neighbour for ploughing it; perhaps he may be worth only a calf or two and a couple of young colts, bought for cheapness; and he struggles with difficulties till these are grown; but when he has horses to work, and cows that give milk and calves, he is then made, and in the road to plenty. It is surprising with how small a sum of money they will venture upon this course of settling; and it proves at the first mention how population must increase in a country where there are such means of a poor man's supporting his family and in which, the larger the family, the easier is his undertaking." : Money profit in such farming there was none unless the land was situated on a river by means of which the surplus products might be shipped to market. A farmer usually produced everything needed for the comfort of his family. Grain grown on the cleared land was ground at a gristmill built of the felled trees and run by water power or wind. Cattle and hogs ranged the woodland and furnished meat, to be eaten fresh or salted down in pickle. Hides were tanned and made up into shoes on the place, and the women of the house spun and wove into warm, durable cloth the wool cut from the sheep that grazed the hill pastures. Flax was grown in sufficient quantity to provide the lighter clothing. Nothing need be purchased but salt and sugar, tea and coffee, millstones, and implements of iron. Under such conditions every enterprising man might acquire property, even though he came into the country as an indentured servant. His term of service at an end, the bondman became a free laborer, and, since wages were high, he quickly accumulated enough money to secure title to a tract of land. sons. The mother country offered no such opportunity to her There wages were low and rents high, and the cost of living great. Not the utmost diligence and thrift could put a poor man in possession of an acre of ground. Small wonder then that the unemployed laborers and disinherited yeomen crowded the ships bound for America and besieged the land offices for title to a share in the wilderness. The New England Colonies. -We have seen with what American difficulty Englishmen adapted themselves to the severe Husbandry, I, 45-93. climate of New England. The winters were bitter beyond anything they had known, and the sudden changes of temperature proved trying to constitutions accustomed to equable island weather. Granite rock and glacial drift made an unpromising combination to farmers accustomed to the fertile fields of Old England. The soil was sterile except in the valleys, and the summers too short for ripening English grains. Nevertheless the colonists who secured grants in this inhospitable region managed to support their families and eventually to accumulate wealth. Maize was successfully grown in the coast districts and was from the first the staple breadstuff. The friendly Squanto taught the Bradford, men of Plymouth how to plant the Indian grain and how to 121. fertilize the soil with fish, one in each hill. Within a few years the Pilgrims were selling corn and salt pork to the fishing stations up and down the coast. Vegetables, too, flourished in the brief, hot summers. Apples and cherries and the hardier fruits did well. The cattle brought over from England at great cost found pasture on the cleared land, but it was necessary to house and feed them through the three or four months when the ground was covered with The forests afforded excellent timber, oaks for the hulls of ships, spruce unexcelled for masts, pine, maple, and chestnut for the building of houses and barns and mills. There was plenty of game, and fish were abundant. Where everything was to be had for the asking, men grew improvident of nature's gifts. The woods were cleared with a wasteful zeal that took no thought of the future. The soil planted to corn was soon drained of its fertility. snow. E |