THE INDUSTRIES OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH 159 perhaps in New York) to affect the life of the people seriously. In the South, Black slavery degraded the condition of the indentured White "servant," and more serious The "Black still made it difficult for him to find profit- laws" able and honorable work when his term of service had expired. As early as 1735, the result appeared in the presence of the class known later as "Poor Whites." In that year Colonel William Byrd declared that these "Ethiopians" "blow up the Pride and ruin the Industry of our White People, who, seeing a Rank of poor Creatures below them, detest work for Fear it should make them look like Slaves." In Virginia, as a rule, slavery was mild; while in South Carolina and Georgia it was excessively brutal. In those two colonies the rice plantations called constantly for fresh importations of savage Africans. In all colonies with a large slave population there were cruel "Black laws," to keep slaves from running away; and everywhere the general attitude of the law toward the slave was one of indifference to human rights. The worst phases of the law were not often appealed to in actual practice; but in New York in 1741, during a panic due to a supposed plot for a slave insurrection, fourteen negroes were burned at the stake (with legal formalities) and a still larger number were hanged, — all on very flimsy evidence. industry : 8. Dependence upon slave labor helped to keep industry purely agricultural in the South, since the slave was unfit for manufactures or for the work of a skilled artisan. Tobacco raising was the chief employment in the Southern tidewater districts of Maryland, Virginia, and agricultural North Carolina, and rice cultivation in South staples for Carolina and Georgia. These tidewater staples were grown mainly on large plantations; and the Virginia planter in particular sought to add estate to estate, and to keep land in his family by rigid laws of entail.1 Between this class of large planters and the "Poor Whites," export 1 "Entail" is a legal arrangement to prevent land from being sold or willed away out of a fixed line of inheritance. Entail is found only with primogeniture. however, there was always a considerable number of small farmers in Virginia; and in North Carolina this element was the main one. The western counties of all the colonies were occupied exclusively in small farming. In the Middle colonies, foodstuffs were raised on a large scale. These colonies exported to the West Indies (both The Middle English and French) most of the bread, flour, colonies: beer, beef, and pork used there. In these colonies, too, immigrant artisans from Germany early introduced rudimentary manufactures, linen, pottery, glassware, hats, shoes, furniture. foodstuffs and manufactures AN ENGLISH COLONIAL-BUILT SCHOONER, The Baltic, coming out of St. Eustatia, Dutch West Indies, November, 1765. From a water color in the Essex Institute, Salem, Mass. In New England, occupations were still more varied. The majority of the people still lived in agricultural villages and tilled small farms; but they could not wring Occupations all their subsistence from the scanty soil. Each farmer was a "Jack-at-all-trades." In the winter The varied of New England days, he hewed out clapboards, staves, and shingles; and in the long evenings, at a little forge in the TRADE AND INDUSTRY 161 fireplace, he hammered out nails and tacks from a bar of iron. Even in the towns, all but the merchant and professional classes had to be able to turn their hands to a variety of work if they would prosper. Mr. Weeden tells of a certain John Marshall, a constable at Braintree, and a commissioned officer in the militia company there, who "farmed a little, made laths in the winter, was painter, carpenter, and messenger, and burned bricks, bought and sold live-stock," and who managed by these varied industries to earn about four shillings a day. Manufactures also had appeared, though, with one exception, on a smaller scale than in Pennsylvania. The exception was shipbuilding. New England built ships for both American and English markets. With her splendid tim ber at the water's edge, Massachusetts could launch an oak ship at about half the cost of a like vessel in an English shipyard; and in 1775 at least a third of the vessels flying the English flag had been built 44 in America. The swift- AN AMERICAN MERCHANT SHIP, of the type known as tall-masted or" deep-sea going." sailing schooner, per fected in this period, was peculiarly a New England creation. Another leading industry was the fisheries, - cod, mackerel, and finally, as these bred an unrivaled race of seamen, the whale fisheries of both polar oceans. New England, too, was preeminently the commercial section. Her schooners-often from villages like Gloucester-carried almost all the trade between colony and colony for Commerce the whole seaboard. And in centers like Boston and Newport (as also in New York and Philadelphia in the Middle colonies) there grew up an aristocracy of great merchants (in the old English meaning of the word), with ware Circles of houses, offices, wharves, and fleets of tall-masted ships on every sea, and agents or correspondents in all parts of the world. One favorite circle of exchange was the exchange "three-cornered route": (1) New England merchants carried rum to Africa, to exchange for Negro slaves; (2) these they sold largely in the West Indies for sugar; and (3) this sugar they All the colonies imported their better grades of clothing and of other manufactures from England. The southern planters dealt through agents in England, to whom they consigned their tobacco. For the other colonies the circle of exchange was a trifle more complex. They imported from England more than they sold there. But they sold to the West Indies more than they bought, re ceiving the balance in money,- mainly French and Spanish coins, with which they settled the balances against them in England. Exchange by barter This drain of coin to England was incessant through the whole colonial period. No coins were struck in the colonies, of course, except for the "Pine-Tree Shilling," of Massachusetts; and there were no banks, to issue currency. Trade was largely carried on, not by money, but by barter; and in all colonies, especially in the first century, debts were settled and taxes were paid in produce (" pay”) at THE THREE SECTIONS 163 a rate for each kind fixed by law. Wages and salaries were paid in the same way. The following record of a vote by a Plymouth town meeting in 1667 hints at the difficulty of getting "good pay" in such a method : "That the sume of fifty pounds shalbee alowed to Mr. Cotton [the minister] for this present yeare (and his wood). To be raised by way of Rate [assessed as a tax] to be payed in such as god gives, ever onely to be minded that a considerable parte of it shalbee payed in the best pay." And toward the end of the colonial period a student at Harvard, afterward president there, paid his tuition with "an old cow." In the lack of a "circulating medium" (especially during the French and Indian Wars, when the governments needed funds), nearly all the colonies at some time after Colonial 1690 issued paper money. The matter was always paper badly handled, and great depreciation followed, money with serious confusion to business. In consequence, the English government finally forbade any more such issues, to the great vexation of many people in America. sections 9. The deep-lying differences between the three great sections of colonial America were suggested roughly by certain significant external appearances of their Outer homes. The South had few towns, none south symbols of Baltimore, except Charleston. The ordinary of the planters lived in white frame houses, with a long porch in front, set at intervals of a mile or more apart, often in parklike grounds. The small class of wealthy planters lived on vaster estates, separated from neighbors by grander distances. In any case, a true "planta- The Southtion," like a medieval manor, was a unit, apart from ern plantathe rest of the world. The planter's importations from Europe were unladen at his own wharf, and his tobacco (with that of the neighboring small farmers) was taken aboard. Leather was tanned; clothing for the hundreds of slaves was made; blacksmithing, woodworking, and other industries needful to the little community, were carried on, sometimes under the direction of White foremen. The mis tion |