lumber; to the ports of Southern Europe they carried salt fish, and West Indian products, to England naval stores, furs, and perhaps some West Indian products. None of these food products were enumerated, and consequently they could be carried anywhere, provided a return cargo made the voyage worth while. These return cargoes consisted of molasses, sugar, and rum from the West Indies, textiles, luxuries of one sort or another, especially wine, and manufactured goods generally from England.

Incidentally, New England ships carried on a curious peddling business all the way up and down the North Atlantic coast. Loading up with a lot of small wares: kitchen utensils, cutlery, and notions, not unlike the stock of the old rural tin-peddler, the Yankee trader would match his wits with customers as far south as Virginia and the Carolinas. New England merchants were famous for the well known triangular trade, from their own ports, to Africa, to the West Indies, and back again. For these voyages the stock consisted chiefly of rum, slaves, and molasses. This chapter in American economic history is interesting from various points of view. The New England and middle colonies exported quantities of foodstuffs and lumber, far more than the English West Indies could consume, so they found markets in the French Islands. Moreover, the New England shippers found it more profitable to buy their molasses in the French islands than in the English. The French had no use for molasses itself, and before the Yankee market was presented to them, they fed it to hogs. They were equally indifferent to the distilled product of molasses, rum. When they wanted strong drink, they preferred brandy. So the New Englanders depended upon the French to buy their surplus provisions, and to furnish them with cheap molasses. These cargoes they brought back home, where the molasses was transformed into rum. Now to the untrained taste of the African negro rum was a blessing such as his own untutored intellect had never been able to provide. And he could get it, quantities of it, enough to submerge the pains of his drab world in debauch after debauch, merely by giving in exchange for it his own black enemies of the neighboring tribe, whom he had been fortunate enough to capture in the last fight. In this way the descendants of good Puritans of Massachusetts, or good dissenters of Rhode Island, instilled into some Africans a lusty desire for strong drink, and carried others off to the slave market in the West Indies or in the southern

colonies. The profits in this trade were tremendous, and Newport, Rhode Island, the center of it, became one of the wealthiest towns along the whole Atlantic coast. Some of the fortunes picked up from the slave trade are still in existence to this day.

But the molasses trade with the French West Indies was looked upon with disfavor by influential interests in England. Many West Indian planters had gone back to England, where they used their influence in Parliament to promote their own financial well-being, with little regard for that of other fortune hunters. Because of French competition, the prices for English sugar and molasses remained low, and the English growers turned to Parliament for a remedy. They pointed out the value of West Indian products to England, and emphasized the need of proper encouragement for their plantations. In spite of the arguments of the New England shipping interests, to the effect that their West Indian trade alone gave them funds to purchase English manufactures, the West Indian planter interests carried the day. In 1733, the famous Molasses Act was passed, imposing heavy duties on all foreign sugar, rum, and molasses imported into the British empire. The tax on molasses, 6d. per gallon, was designed to be prohibitive. Fortunately for New England, the measure was not enforced until after 1758, so the old trade continued to flourish without interruption.

In New England manufacturing had made more headway than in the other colonies. Shipbuilding was carried on actively at Philadelphia, and somewhat less so at New York, but in New England scores of towns were interested in naval architecture. The first ship built in Massachusetts was launched in 1631, and by 1676, over seven hundred ships had been built in Massachusetts. The work was continued throughout the colonial period, encouraged by the English government, and fostered and protected by the First Navigation Act. The New Englanders built ships for sale as well as for their

own use.

The distilling industry should be included in the list of manufactures. Distilleries were numerous and profitable in Boston, Providence, and Newport, while Medford rum was almost as famous as Congregational theology. There were few if any conscientious scruples concerning either the manufacture or the use of alcoholic liquors in those days, and sumptuary reforms like the Eighteenth Amendment were never even dreamed of.

There were gristmills, sawmills, and tanneries in the back country of New England, as well as in the middle colonies and in the Carolinas. Likewise, where clay could be found, there were brick-yards. Most of the New England farmers wore homespun, and besides this sort of manufacturing, there were numerous other domestic industries. There was a good deal of local iron manufacturing in New England, especially after 1720. Bog iron, so called, furnished the raw material, and was worked up through the various stages of pig iron, bar iron, and rods. The farmers bought the rods, out of which they made their own nails, spikes, hoops, and wagon tires. Later, a good deal of ship hardware was turned out, and the casting of iron pots and kettles was carried well past the experimental stage.

In spite of these promising beginnings during the colonial period, manufacturing never advanced beyond the preliminary stages. This was due in part perhaps to lack of capital, but more definitely to the shortage and the high cost of labor. With so much unoccupied land available, there was little incentive to work for low wages. And yet even those beginnings were promising enough to alarm the manufacturing interests in England. In 1699, Parliament endeavored to discourage the manufacture of woolen goods in America by prohibiting the exportation of woolens from one colony to another. Again, in 1732, the London Company of Felt Merchants induced Parliament to limit the number of apprentices which could be employed by colonial hat makers. And, in 1750, another Act of Parliament prohibited all but the crudest forms of iron manufacture in the colonies. doubtful if these restrictive measures seriously affected colonial activities. Domestic manufactures were certainly not interfered with, and there seems to have been no interruption of iron manufacturing.

Perhaps one other restrictive act of Parliament might be mentioned in this connection. In 1757 the colonies were forbidden to issue paper money, and this interference with manufacturing undoubtedly hampered a flourishing colonial industry. But economists would find less to complain of in this measure than did some of the Americans.

By 1760, when the trend of American development began to point toward misunderstanding between the colonies and Great Britain, the American "plantations" had developed a surprisingly varied and profitable economic life, much of which was not directly connected with Great Britain. For the commercial aspects of these interests,

the colonists owed an incalculable debt to the First Navigation Act, which guarded them from foreign competition. It seems that the gains from this protection more than offset any losses which might be attributed to the restrictive regulations, especially since many of these were not enforced. But to the Americans the advantages accruing from the First Navigation Act were never even thought of until after the Revolution. They looked upon their trade as something for which they alone were responsible, a product of their own work and ingenuity, and they felt the pride which victors over obstacles always feel: a sense of achievement for which they were indebted to no one.

The evolution of both government and commerce in the colonies carried them away from, rather than toward, England in attitude and point of view. In case of crisis, these two vital interests would inevitably shape American feeling toward any imperial policy, political or economic. Moreover, if the proposed policy seemed to run counter to American interests, there would be nothing to lead the Americans to accept it. Bound to England by merely sentimental ties, as many thought they were, they could see these snap with comparatively little concern. The trend of American growth was turning toward possible independence, although of this trend the people were entirely unaware.

CHAPTER XI

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT BEFORE 1770

The constitutional and economic development in the colonies furnished one part of the foundation for independence; the steady expansion toward an ever new and constantly receding frontier furnished another. The process of colonization was only begun when the seaboard colonies were established. The Americans were occupying a region that was imperial in extent, a fact of which they were becoming aware. And every additional step toward the West meant the inevitable transfer of the center of interest from Europe to America. It was not until 1815 and after that the United States definitely "turned around and faced the West," but the preparations for this significant shifting about can be traced back to the first offshoot from Jamestown. As the Americans conquered the continent, they were in turn conquered by it, and a genuine process of Americanization was successfully and unconsciously carried through. Each new stage in the process meant a new return to primitive conditions, in which the pioneers were free to work out new political and social theories.

The tidewater settlements have already been described. Coming approximately from the same stock, these first pioneers found that their environment had a pronounced influence in shaping their institutions. The New England town, with its small farms, worked by the owners, was very different from the southern county, with its large plantations, cultivated by negro slaves. And yet in both these sections, even as late as 1750, the people were still predominantly European in point of view.

Beyond the tidewater regions lay the so-called Piedmont. In this section, running from Maine through Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania south to Georgia there was gradually built up a new society, farther removed from Europe, both in distance and in mental attitude, and still father modified by American conditions.

The same causes sent settlers into this upland region which had sent the first Virginians beyond Jamestown, and the Puritans, malcontents and others, into Rhode Island and Connecticut. People