COMMERCE AND FISHERIES 347 prosperous years, and the influence was probably bad. Merchants took chances in whatever field seemed to offer opportunity, and expected to recoup themselves by one lucky stroke for the loss through an unlucky one. American Shipping. This rise in commerce was accompanied by similar progress in navigation. Before the revolution more American ships were engaged in the trade with the West Indies than in that with the British ports in Europe. After the revolution the West Indian trade was lost on account of the navigation laws, which induced congress to establish restrictions of its own. In 1789 and 1790 it enacted discriminating duties in behalf of American ships, and the consequent increase in American tonnage was so rapid that the British shipowners were in consternation. Foreign traders then employed 41.19 per cent of all the tonnage engaged in our trade. It fell slowly, until in 1795 it was only 9.7 per cent; and from that time until the war of 1812 its highest proportion was 17.2 per cent. Meanwhile, our actual tonnage grew, until in 1807 it was eight times as great as in 1789. After that it decreased under the operation of our various restrictive acts, but it recovered after the war, and in 1816 was 77.48 per cent of all the tonnage engaged in our foreign trade. The statistics available show that far the larger part of this tonnage was American built. The The fisheries also demanded governmental assistance. In colonial days they yielded great profits and were encouraged by the mother country as a breeding source of seamen. The treaty of 1783 guaranteed the American fishermen the right to fish on Fisheries. the Banks, and in territorial waters as well, but did not allow them to dry fish on any but unsettled shores. Whatever advantage lay in this was later neutralized by restrictions passed in England forbidding the importation of the product of foreign fisheries and by English bounties to fishermen. Loud complaints now arose from the whale and cod fishers of America. Deprived of their best market, they petitioned congress for aid, and so much was it felt that our own nurseries of the sea should be sustained that one of the first steps taken by congress under the constitution was to allow a drawback on fish exported equal to the duty on the salt used in curing them. In 1792 the law went farther, and awarded a bounty in money to persons engaged in cod fishing. Under its operation the industry revived and became prosperous. The The embargo, the subsequent restrictions, and the war which followed again checked the fisheries, to the great satisfaction of the Canadians, who resented having to share the inshore fishing with the Americans. In their behalf the British Fisheries government, in making the treaty of Ghent, sought to with- after 1815. hold the right. It held that the war ended the treaty grants of 1783, and would not yield them again unless we allowed British subjects to navigate the Mississippi. To this Clay, one of the negotiators, objected so stoutly that the treaty as finally made was silent on each question. It was, however, agreed that later negotiations should settle the fisheries question. With the return of peace Americans appeared in their old haunts only to be warned off by armed vessels. They might fish, they were told, on the Banks, but they would not be allowed within territorial waters. Then came negotiations, the upshot of which was provisions in the convention of 1818 that our fishermen might take fish off the Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and along the most unsettled shores of Newfoundland and Labrador, with the privilege of curing fish and getting certain necessary supplies in uninhabited parts. On this basis the fisheries continued with a restricted prosperity. The years immediately following the revolution saw a sad disorder in the currency. Exports were relatively small and much of the The Currency. foreign specie which had come into the country in the channels of trade was drained out to pay balances. Seven states sought to remedy the deficiency by a return to paper money, or state notes, a form of currency forbidden in the constitution soon to be adopted. In 1791 a national bank was created with a capital stock of $10,000,000. Its notes were issued cautiously, and were gladly received everywhere. Its power to present for redemption the notes of state banks enabled it to check overissue by such banks. Thus the paper currency was sound until the charter of the bank expired in 1811. The bank asked for a continuation of its existence, but the republican majority was very hostile, and would not even allow an extension to wind up its affairs. Then a swarm of state banks sprang up, each issuing its notes without restraint. The government was soon at war, and, anxious to get money of any kind, gave its bonds for these insecure overissues, and received them for its dues, with the result that it lost $5,000,000 in the process. In 1811 there were 88 state banks with a total circulation of $22,700,000: in 1816 there were 246, with circulation of $68,000,000. This alarming inflation led to the incorporation of the second United States bank, 1816, and by 1820 the circulation of the state banks had fallen to $40,641,574. In the panic which followed the capture of Washington, 1814, all the banks south of New England suspended specie payment and did not resume until 1817. During the war of 1812 $36,680,000 of treasury notes were issued, nearly half of which was outstanding at the end of 1815. Distress in the War of 1812. Manu The last quarter of the eighteenth century brought a great revolution in the world's manufactures. Before that time weavNew Era in ing, spinning, nail-making, and most everything else was done by hand in the homes of cottagers. But beginning with Hargreaves's spinning jenny, 1764, several inventions led to the power loom, by which the textile industry was shifted factures. BEGINNING OF MANUFACTURES 349 from the cottages of the operatives to the factory of the great manufacturer. The same thing happened in other lines, and the result was the factory system, with its large outlay of capital and its peculiar relation of employer and employees. This process was first established in England, and it was well developed by 1800. Manu For a time no response to this English development was seen in American industry. There was from colonial days a good deal of manufacturing of the old kind, ironware, hats, shoes, nails, and farm implements being some of the notable products. Early The lack of capital, the profits of agriculture, and the abil- factures in ity of British manufacturers to undersell served to delay the America. introduction of the new system. But spite of the difficulties, some advance was made. In 1793, the year Whitney invented the cotton gin, Samuel Slater, in partnership with Moses Brown, set up at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, the first successful cotton factory in the United States. It was supplied with machinery of the British design, and its example was imitated in many other places, although the enterprises struggled along with many drawbacks. the Embargo and the War. In 1807 began the restrictions of the importation of British merchandise, lasting in one form or another until the war, which, with the blockade that followed it, effectually shut out foreign goods. Thus for eight years the American manufacturers Influence of had the home market to themselves. The result was a marvelous rise in manufacturing. In 1807 the cotton industry employed 8000 spindles, two years later it had 80,000; and similar progress was made in other lines. Among all classes spread an enthusiasm for articles made in America, and politicians wishing to be popular appeared on public occasions in homespun clothes. Since the failure in commerce resulted in much unemployed capital and labor in the seacoast region of New England, it was here that manufactures gained most rapidly. The proverbial Yankee skill with machinery and the hard conditions of farming added to the stimulus. At the close of the war New England supplied a large part of the country's merchandise, and the agricultural South was sending thither $6,000,000 a year to settle balances for goods purchased at higher prices than it formerly paid abroad. It seemed to the federalists a just retribution that they who forced the war on the country should thus be made to feel one of its burdens. The rise of manufactures created a new class of rich men, less prominent in social and business matters than the old aristocracy of commerce. Between the two classes there followed sharp dissensions, but the manufacturers had greater natural strength than their rivals, and with the aid of a protective tariff gained so rapidly in wealth that ten years after the war they dominated the policy of the government in relation to business. Effects of Manufacturing on Society. The Slave SLAVERY MADE SECTIONAL In 1776 slavery existed in all the states. Many of the colonists wished to arrest its spread, but the British merchants protested, and the king vetoed the restrictive colonial laws. The colonists resented his action, and seized the first opportunity to act for themselves. In the "Association" of 1774 slave imary Period. portations were forbidden, the first congress after independence reasserted the restriction, and for the rest of the revolution the trade was checked. After the war commerce generally was controlled by the states, all of which but those in the far South forbade the slave trade. There were vast unsettled regions in the Carolinas and Georgia, and it was thought they must have negroes to develop them. But even here the advocates of restriction won, and by 1798 each of these states had forbidden further importations. The constitution, it will be remembered, declared that congress could not prohibit the trade before 1808. Meanwhile, a movement for emancipation had swept over the entire North. In this section were few slaves, and the opponents of Emancipation in the North under Constitutional Provisions; the institution needed only to organize the non-slaveholders, a large majority, to carry laws for emancipation. Vermont led the way in 1777 by declaring slavery illegal in the bill of rights incorporated in her constitution, and New Hampshire did the same in the constitution of 1784. In each state the few slaveholders could only convert their slaves into servants for wages or sell them out of the reach of the state's jurisdiction. The Massachusetts constitution of 1780 declared that "all men are born free and equal," and in 1783 the court in a test case held that this annulled a master's right to the labor of his slave. Thus in three states the institution passed quietly out of existence. In others the cause of freedom encountered greater opposition, but its advocates had recourse to the legislatures. Their request for emancipation by state statutes was met with argument that by Statute. to free the slaves was to confiscate property. After struggles of varying length, they carried each Northern state but one for gradual emancipation, which meant that slave children born after the enactment of the said statutes should be free on reaching a specified age, usually twenty-five years. The first victory of this kind was in Pennsylvania, chiefly through the efforts of the Quakers; and it came in 1780. Connecticut and Rhode Island followed in 1784, New York in 1799, and New Jersey in 1804. The men of New York were not satisfied with their achievement, and in 1817, when the power of the slaveholders was much weakened, a law was carried for complete emancipation after 1827. Delaware alone of the Northern states retained slavery, and here it was safe until the end of the civil war. OPPOSITION CHECKED IN THE SOUTH 351 Movement The movement for freedom was felt south of the Mason and Dixon line and was strong in Virginia, where Jefferson, Washington, and many other leading men wished to rid the state of an unprofitable form of labor and of the presence of an The Emanalien and undeveloped element of the population. But cipation here was encountered a more serious obstacle than had yet fails in the appeared. The small proportion of blacks in the North South. involved no menace to the civilization there, were they slave or free. But the people of Virginia knew not what to do with a great mass of freed blacks. To leave them masters of their own actions in the white population seemed to invite trouble, and to send them to Africa, which many thought the only proper accompaniment of emancipation, was so expensive that it was out of the question. These objections proved fatal to the efforts of the more far-seeing ones; and thus it happened that two plans for abolishing slavery, one announced in 1779 and the other in 1796, were found impracticable. At this time the invention of the cotton gin had begun to have its effect on slavery, making a great demand for slaves in the states to the southward and raising the prices of them to such a point that masters felt a growing unwillingness to part with such an important source of wealth. Thus the seaboard states settled down to a free and a slave section, a basis of opposition in interest which proved very fruitful of later conflict. West of the mountains the same principle was followed. By the Northwest Ordinance the Ohio divided slavery from freedom between the Mississippi and the Alleghanies. Then came the Missouri Compromise line for the Louisiana purchase; but eventually the matter no longer admitted of compromise. Congress. states and In 1793 a From the beginning of the national government the South feared the North would use her position in the union to restrict slavery. There was warm debate when in the first congress petitions for restrictions of the slave trade came from abolitionists. Slavery in The result was the adoption of a set of resolutions guaranteeing that slavery should be left to the jurisdiction of the that the slave trade should be undisturbed before 1808. fugitive slave law was passed. It gave the master the right to recover an absconding slave by proving ownership before a magistrate without jury or ordinary forms of law. The law was hard on the slave, but it was necessary from his owners' standpoint. To provide otherwise would enable the slave to have the trial postponed, at heavy expense to the claimant, who might at last lose the suit through the sympathy of a Northern jury. On the other hand, it left the disposition of the freedom of a human being to the irresponsible decision of the lowest rank of courts, a thing not ordinarily allowed in the pettiest property suits. Later it was charged that unprincipled men, by bribing some magistrates, carried away to slavery negroes who were unquestionably free. The reflec First Fugi tive Slave Law, 1793. |