the emigrant, the Middle States offered the greatest inducements. In New England the land was so parcelled out among the population that there were comparatively few large estates, and the price of that which was for sale was high, for which reason even her own citizens had begun to emigrate to the West. In the South the climate was unfavorable to toil, while the Far West offered only the greatest hardships, coupled with the danger of death at the hand of prowling savages. Central New York was being rapidly settled by New England emigrants, but of all sections Pennsylvania seemed the most favorable to the emigrant farmer. The emigrants, chiefly from Ireland and Germany, unable to pay their passage across the water, hired themselves out to those who were willing to pay their transportation charges. After serving their terms at menial service, these redemptioners usually looked about for a suitable spot on which to settle and lay out a farm. In many places land could be procured at nominal cost, for the land speculators were anxious to rid themselves of investments which too frequently proved failures. Farms rarely exceeded 300 acres in extent, 150 acres being a good average. Discreet purchasers insisted upon fertile soil, proximity to a good market, and if such were possible water connection with some prosperous port.

Economic conditions had not greatly changed in the last decade. In 1793

the Treasury Department prepared a handbook setting forth the conditions of the United States, and Thomas Cooper, in his Information Respecting America, gives a flattering picture of American life. The chief source of our wealth at that time was land and landed products, though there was already considerable commerce. More ships were built in the United States in 1792 than in any former year since the settlement of the colonies. A large tonnage was engaged in the coasting trade and in the cod and whale fisheries. At that time, though luxuries were not unknown, the imports consisted chiefly of articles contributing to comfort; but importation had not kept abreast of the advance in population and wealth. The principal exports were raw materials used in manufactures, breadstuffs and working animals. As the years

passed, passed, conditions naturally improved.

Once in possession of his land, the farmer began to clear it, removing the small trees and underbrush, and finally erecting a small log cabin, roughly put together, the interstices stopped with rails, calked with straw or moss and daubed with mud, while the roof consisted of thin staves fastened on by heavy poles. For a few years life was rough, lonely and monotonous. During the spring and summer it consisted of planting and reaping the harvest, and in the fall and winter of shooting fur-bearing animals, whose skins were bartered at the nearest

store for clothing, tea, sugar, and other household necessities. Gradually the lone pioneer came to have neighbors. Larger spaces were cleared and devoted to the raising of such products as yielded a pecuniary return, and saw-mills and other small manufactories came to be established. Townships rapidly sprang up, industries began to flourish; the boys and girls married and population quickly increased. The pioneer farmers were often ingenious in their pursuit of gain, bringing into play many of the inventive traits which later so rapidly placed their country among the foremost nations of the earth.

Wheat was raised everywhere, save on the coastal plains of the far South. The rural communities were engaged chiefly in marketing food products, tobacco and lumber. New England still exported large quantities of timber, boards, staves and masts, and the fishing interest was still large. The best region for the raising of wheat was in the Middle States, and the upper parts of Maryland and Virginia. The tobacco industry had suffered severely from commercial restrictions, and the Southerners loudly complained that this great industry was handicapped, while the commercial interests of the North were receiving encouragements from the government. The chief exports from North Carolina were naval stores and pork, while from South Carolina and Georgia large quantities of rice and indigo were exported. At this time the cot

machinery

485

of production

ton industry had already passed its experimental stage, the only hindrance to its more rapid development and advance being the necessity of removing cotton seed by hand. In 1793, however, this difficulty was overcome by Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin. The showed no radical difference from that of past ages. The plow was rude and clumsy, the cradle had not yet come into general use, and in Virginia grain was still trodden out by horses. Indeed, threshing-machines and scientific plows were considered novelties. Stock was ill-cared for, some running wild; cattle was left to feed on what pasture they could find, and even in New England the stock was not housed until the severest frosts on the theory that exposure hardened them. Except among the best farmers, drainage, manures, and rotation of crops

were uncommon.

Manufactures had developed but slowly in the country during the Revolutionary era. The people thought of little else than military affairs. Power machinery, though its exportation from England had been prohibited, had gradually come to the country, and its introduction in America slowly but surely revolutionized industrial processes. The increase in the production of cotton stimulated the manufacture of cotton goods, and in the last decade of the Eighteenth century the cotton manufactures of the New England States became exceed

ingly important. Among other articles (made chiefly by hand) were furniture, hats, shoes, nails* and other implements made of iron, and numerous utilities used in domestic and commercial life. Coarse clothing, pottery, maple sugar, and materials for shipbuilding were also turned outchiefly hand-made. Factories were small, employing little capital. Factory owners generally located their buildings near good water-power and within easy reach of the market towns. Large mill-towns, with a distinctive mill population and factory pursuits strictly divided, were as yet unknown.‡

There were many manufactures in New England, but none on a large scale, household industry still being depended upon to feed and clothe the people. Their whale-oil, salt fish, lum

new

new trade of nail making is to me what an additional title of nobility or the ensigns of a order are in Europe."- Ford's ed. of Jefferson's Writings, vol. vii., p. 14.

Schouler, United States, vol. i., p. 240.

For commercial and industrial history, sec Timothy Pitkin, Statistical View of the Commerce of the United States; Thomas Seybert, Statistical Annals of the United States of America, 1789– 1818; Tench Coxe, View of the United States of America; J. L. Bishop, History of American Manufactures, vol. ii., chap. 1; W. R. Bagnall, Textile Industries of the United States; Ibid, History of the Early Development of Cotton Manufactures of the United States; Samuel Batchelder, Introduction and Early Progress of Cotton Manufactures in the United States; B. F. French, History of the Iron Trade in the United States; 16211857; J. M. Swank, History of the Manufacture of Iron in all Ages.

ber and rum were principally sent abroad; but there was a considerable coast trade in turner's articles, shoes, nails, home-made linens and cloths, cheese, butter, etc., much of which being sent to Norfolk and other Southern ports. Two or three small mills spun cotton with doubtful success, but the New England States could not hope to compete with England in the cheapness and variety of ordinary manufactures. In and about Philadelphia flourished several important industries, such as iron-works, paper and gunpowder factories, and manufactories of pleasure carriages.

Further south, the Shenandoah Valley rivalled Pennsylvania and Connecticut in richness and skill of husbandry, but even its agriculture had suffered from the competition of Tennessee and Kentucky and from the emigration which had drawn away fully 100,000 people. The land was no longer as productive, for the farmers had not yet learned how to replenish the soil. Even Jefferson, one of the most progressive of the Southern planters, complained that he could get but six or eight bushels of wheat per acre and had been forced to abandon the more profitable cultivation of tobacco. The cultivation of tobacco had been almost the sole object of landowners, and, even where the lands were not exhausted, a bad system of agriculture and the force of habit prevented improvement. Regarding the more southerly regions, Washington said:

"The uplands of North and South Carolina and Georgia are not dissimilar in soil, but as they approach the lower latitude are less congenial to wheat and are supposed to be proportionably more unhealthy. Towards the seaboard of all the Southern States, and farther south more so, the lands are low, sandy and unhealthy; for which reason I shall say little concerning them, for as I should not choose to be an inhabitant of them myself, I ought not to say anything that would induce others to be so. * * I understand that from thirty to forty dollars per acre may be denominated the medium price in the vicinity of the Susquehanna in the State of Pennsylvania, from twenty to thirty on the Potomac in what is called the Valley, and less, as I have noticed before, as you proceed southerly."

*

North Carolina was, relatively, among the poorest of the States. Alexander Wilson, the Scotch ornithologist, a confirmed grumbler but a shrewd judge, painted the following picture of that State:

"The taverns are the most desolate and beggarly imaginable; bare, bleak and dirty walls, one or two old broken chairs and a bench form all the furniture. The white females seldom make their appearance. At supper you sit down to a meal the very sight of which is sufficient to deaden the most eager appetite, and you are surrounded by a half-a-dozen dirty, half-naked blacks, male and female, whom any man of common scent might smell a quarter of a mile off. The house itself is raised upon props four or five feet, and the space below is left open for the hogs, with whose charming vocal performances the wearied traveller is serenaded the whole night long."

Nevertheless the Carolinas possessed one new element of wealth which promised much for their inhabitants. Watt's steam engine had been applied in England to spinning, weaving and printing cotton, and an immense demand had arisen for that staple. The invention of the cotton gin added a sudden impulse to the cotton industry; land which had been

VOL. IV 32

487

In the North hired labor was employed generally, though the system of indentured servants had not yet entirely disappeared. There were few skilled laborers, as the rural nature of the country tended more to develop agriculturalists than artisans. In the South slave labor had taken the place of all the lower forms of hired labor, though the slaves were at best only about three-fourths as efficient as the white laborers. The "New Negroes" from Africa were totally ignorant of the work they were expected to perform. At first the slaves were bound out in small numbers, but as the cotton industry developed and as large plantations became devoted to its cultivation, the slave population greatly increased. The increase in population due to the importation of slaves had a tendency to reduce purchasing ability, for slavery to a great extent precluded the existence of a wage-earning class. The slaves merely required enough to keep them alive and to clothe them; hence there was little market for anything save the barest necessities. As the large plantations

practically constituted communities in themselves, the purchasing of supplies was conducted through commission merchants in distant places, and thus there was little local trade, which resulted in commercial stagnation in the South.

In the meantime the retail trade in the North was proceeding along usual lines. The commercial classes had grown steadily and were in close alliance with the financial classes. Trade had become highly prosperous and gradually began to assume the place formerly held by agriculture, so that when the merchant classes attained wealth the conviction became deep-rooted that such wealth had not been secured by honest means.

Commercial relations with England were practically severed. A bill, introduced by Pitt in Parliament, in 1783, granting trade concessions to the United States, had failed of passage. In 1791 some slight concessions were obtained, but these did not greatly relieve the situation. The Jay treaty, however, furthered the commercial interests considerably. Each nation might trade freely with the other, subject to the ordinary custom duties and other commercial regulations, and American merchants were permitted to trade freely with the British East Indies. Imports and exports increased by leaps and bounds. In 1795 the imports from Great Britain were valued at $23,313,000 and in 1801 at $39,519,000. During the same period the exports increased from $6,324,000

to $30,931,000. On the other hand, trade with the French West Indies experienced a considerable decline, due chiefly to the turbulent conditions in these islands and the rapacity of British war ships. ish war ships. In 1790 the total imports were $23,000,000; in 1795, $69,756,268; and in 1801, $111,363,511. In 1790 the total exports were $20,205,156; in 1795, $47,989,472.44, and in 1801 $93,020,513 (though of the exports $25,000,000 in 1795 and $46,000,000 in 1801 were reëxports of foreign products).* In 1800 the value of exports from New York was but $14,000,000, and the net revenue from imports in 1799 was $2,373,000, as against $1,607,000 collected in Massachusetts. The exports from Pennsylvania amounted to $12,000,000, the custom house receipts amounting to $1,350,000. The exports from South Carolina were nearly equal in value to those of Pennsylvania or Massachusetts, consisting chiefly of cotton; the imports were equally large, and Charleston might expect soon to rival Boston, New York, Philadelphia or Baltimore. Whereas but 200,000 pounds of cotton had been sent abroad in 1791, more than 20,000,000 pounds were sent in 1801, and by 1803 the quantity was doubled.

Lack of capital had greatly handicapped both commercial and indus

* See the reports in American State Papers, Commerce and Navigation, vol. i., pp. 23-43, 319342, 488-489; and the statistical tables in the Annual Review of the Foreign Commerce of the United States, issued by the government.