REMARKS ON EARLY ATTEMPTS TO ESTABLISH MANUFACTURES.

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style of glowing description the immense profit to be derived from the Colonies, and recommends their encouragement by government as a means of getting rid of criminals from the kingdom, a plan already adopted by King James some years previously, and which afterward proved a source of great detriment to the social and moral interests of the colonists as well as to their industry. "It will be," he says, moreover, "to this commonwealth a standing full magazine of wheat, rice, cole-seed, rapeseed, flax, cotton, salt, potashes, sope-ashes, sugars, wines, silks, olives, etc." In regard to Iron he says: "Neether does Virginia yield to any other province whatsoever in excellency and plenty of this oare: and I cannot promise to myself any other than extraordinary successe and gaine if this noble and usefull staple be but vigirously followed." He compares Virginia with Persia and China in regard to climate and productions, allowing the latter no advantage but in their antiquity; and in reference to the silk grass already mentioned he says: "For what concerns the Flax of China, that we may not lose the smallest circumstance of parallell with Virginia, Nature herselfe hath enriched this her bosome favourite with a voluntary plant which by art, industry and transplantation may be multiplied and improved to a degree of as plentifull but more excellent nature, which because of its accession to the quality of silke wee entitle silke grass; of this Queen Elizabeth had a substantial and rich peece of Grogaine made and presented to her. Of this Mr. Porey, in his discovery of the great river Chamonoak, to the south of James River, delivers a relation as of infinite quantity covering the surface of a vast forest of pine trees, being sixty miles in length."

In reference to these early attempts to establish the manufacturing arts, Mr. Bancroft remarks: "The business which occupied the first session under the written constitution (1621) related chiefly to the encouragement of domestic industry; and the culture of silk particularly engaged the attention of the assembly. But legislation, though it can favor industry, cannot create it. When soil, men, and circumstances combine to render manufacture desirable, legislation can protect the infancy of enterprise against the unequal competiton with established skill. The culture of silk, long, earnestly and frequently recommended to the attention of Virginia, is successfully pursued only where a superiority of labor exists in a redundant population. In America the first wants of life left no labor without a demand. Silk-worms could not be cared for when every comfort of household existence required to be created. Still less was the successful cultivation of the vine possible." He regards it as a fortunate circumstance that their attention was turned from such efforts, to the more profitable one of cultivating tobacco. Of the prosperity of the colony a few years later he writes: "Possessed of security and great

abundance of land, a free market for their staple, and practically all the rights of an independent state, having England for its guardian against foreign oppression rather than its ruler, the colonists enjoying all the prosperity which a virgin soil, equal laws and general uniformity of condition could bestow, their numbers increased; the cottages were filled with children, as the ports were with ships and emigrants. At Christmas, 1640, there were trading in Virginia, ten ships from London, two from Bristol, twelve Hollanders, and seven from New England. The number of colonists was already twenty thousand."

In 1662 for the encouragement of Manufactures, prizes were offered for the best specimens of linen and woolen cloth, and a reward of fifty pounds of tobacco was given for each pound of silk. It was enjoined upon every person to plant mulberry trees in proportion to the number of acres of land he held. Tan-houses were erected, with "curriers and shoemakers attached," one in each county, at its own expense, at which hides were received at a fixed price and shoes sold at rates prescribed by statute: and to encourage the salt-works of Colonel Scarborough on the Eastern Shore, the importation of salt into that county was prohibited. Rewards were appointed in proportion to their tonnage of all vessels built, and all fees and duties payable to such shipping were remitted. The duty imposed upon tobacco by Cromwell (1652), and reenacted at the Restoration, so embarrassed this trade, that in 1666 new efforts were made to introduce Manufactures. Each county was ordered to set up a loom at the public expense; the rewards for silk were renewed, and severe penalties imposed for neglecting flax, hemp, etc.a Sir Edmund Andros, governor in 1692, we are informed, greatly encouraged Manufactures; in his time fulling-mills were set up by act of Assembly, and he also gave particular marks of his favor toward the propagation of cotton, which since his time has been much neglected." Of his successor Governor Nicholson (1698), it is complained that, "instead of encouraging Manufactures, he sent over inhuman and unreasonable memorials against them: viz. That while he represented their tobacco crops as insufficient, from its low price, to procure them clothing, he recommended Parliament, "to pass an act forbidding the plantations to make their own clothing," which, in other words, is desiring a charitable law that the planter shall go naked."

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But manufacturing enterprise seems also to have been less congenial

(1) This seems to have been the commencement of the system of interference with American trade and manufactures. (2) Beverley p. 58.

(3) Beverley, p. 82. There can be no doubt that the injudicious policy of Great Britain was much influenced by the representations of her Colonial governors.

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to the Virginia colonists than to those of New England; and the former continued long almost entirely dependent upon England for their clothing and other supplies, which they received in exchange for their great staple Tobacco, although not wanting in the raw materials, iron, flax, hemp, silk, wool, leather, etc., which usually incite to such undertakings. So great was their dependence, that Beverley, who published in 1705, reproachfully laments the sad defection of his countrymen from the habits of industry which he had commended in the first settlers, and the indisposition of the assemblies to give that encouragement which they had formerly bestowed. "They have their clothing of all sorts from England, as linen, woolen and silk, hats and leather. Yet flax and hemp grow nowhere in the world better than there. Their sheep yield good increase and bear good fleeces; but they shear them only to cool them. mulberry tree, whose leaf is the proper food of the silkworm, grows there like a weed, and silkworms have been observed to thrive extremely and without any hazard. The very furs that their hats are made of perhaps go first from thence; and most of their hides lie and rot, or are made use of only for covering dry goods in a leaky house. Indeed, some few hides with much ado are tanned and made into servants' shoes, but at so careless a rate that the planters don't care to buy them if they can get others; and sometimes perhaps a better manager than ordinary will vouchsafe to make a pair of breeches of a deer skin. Nay they are such abominable ill husbands, that though their country be overrun with wood yet they have all their wooden ware from England; their cabinets, chairs, tables, stools, chests, boxes, cart wheels and all other things, even so much as their bowls and birchen brooms, to the eternal reproach of their laziness."

As a reason for this state of things, he assigns, in addition to their want of concentration in towns, and other causes, what was probably a very true one in that case, that "such Manufactures are always neglected where tobacco bears any thing of a price."

The Virginia colonists were essentially Planters, and regarded commercial as well as manufacturing pursuits as less respectable than those of agriculture: hence their carrying trade,—the exportation of their tobacco and the importation of their supplies,—was left in the hands of the more commercial New Englanders. The climate and the fertility of their soil, the cheapness and abundance of the land, enabling many to acquire estates almost manorial in extent, all concurred with the native tastes of the inhabitants in fostering this sentiment; and Manufactures have not to this day become so general in that State as in many others whose settlement has been much more recent.

CHAPTER III.

SHIP-BUILDING IN THE COLONIES OF MASSACHUSETTS, MAINE, CONNECTICUT, NEW HAMPSHIRE, AND RHODE ISLAND.

WE have seen that the history of the efforts made during the first hundred years, to introduce the Manufacturing Arts into the oldest of the American Colonies, is little more than a record of unsuccessful enterprise. Passing, however, to the Colonists whose advent upon these shores took place December 22, 1620, an event still commemorated in solemn festivals, we shall probably find some degree of success even in their earliest attempts in the industrial arts. With a sterile soil and a rugged climate, they early betook themselves to Manufacturing and Commercial enterprises; and so successfully, that, at the present day, there is scarcely a useful art of ancient or modern times, that is not "naturalized" among them, and scarcely a region of the globe so remote or inaccessible that is not familiar with the products of their labor. Those efforts, so far as we have been able to glean a knowledge of them from various sources, we shall proceed to notice, nearly in the order of their occurrence.

Next to the cultivation of the soil for the supply of the means of subsistence, the abundance of timber, and the comparative ease with which it could be prepared for market, naturally attracted attention to it as a cheap and ready resource. For the products of the forest in every shape there was an ample demand at that time in England, where the timber had already been so wasted for the supply of iron-works, that as early as 1581 it had been found necessary to restrain its use. The West India Islands also were ready to exchange their staple products for pipe-staves, hoops and lumber, etc. Hence the first products of the industry of the Plymouth colony, of Rhode Island, and probably of others, sent to a foreign market, were manufactured from the almost inexhaustible wealth of the American forests.

On the 10th of September, 1623, a ship of one hundred and forty tons, called the "Anne," Mr. William Pierce, Master, was freighted at Plymouth, and returned to England, her cargo consisting of Clap-boards, with a few beaver skins and other furs.

Limiting our researches, however, at present to only one branch of

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Industry, in which the products of the forest were made available in aid of Commerce, and in which this country has since become pre-eminent, viz., SHIP-BUILDING, we find that the first vessel, with the exception of a few open boats, built by the followers of De Soto, ever constructed by Europeans in this country, was a Dutch Yacht, named the "Onrest," or Restless," of 38 feet keel, 44 feet long, 11 feet wide, and 16 tons burden. She was built by Captain Adriaen Block, at Manhattan River, in 1614, to supply the place of one destroyed by fire, which, with four others, arrived there that year from Amsterdam. In her, Captain Hendrickson, in August, 1616, discovered the Schuylkill River, and explored nearly the whole coast from Nova Scotia to the Capes of Virginia, after which he returned to Holland; and having presented a finely executed map of the coast, he asked a grant of the country, which was not conceded however. During the same year (1614), Captain John Smith sailed for "North Virginia" with two ships and forty-five men and boys, to make experiments upon a gold and copper mine. Shey reached the island Monahigan, on the coast of Maine, latitude 43° 30′, in April, where they made some attempt at the whaling business; but failing in that, they built seven boats, in which thirty-seven men made a very successful fishing voyage. Thus the first humble attempt at the fishing business was made in American bottoms.

1. SHIP-BUILDING IN PLYMOUTH.-In 1624, within four years after the landing, the Colony at Plymouth received an accession of a carpenter and a salt-maker, sent out by the Company. Of the former, Governor Bradford says, "He quickly builds two very good and strong shallops, with a great and strong lighter, and had hewn timber for Ketches (a much larger description of vessel), but this spoilt; for in the heat of the season, he falls into a fever and dies, to our great loss and sorrow." The salt-maker -for whom the lighter appears to have been built-selected a site and erected a building, and made an attempt to manufacture salt for the fishery, first at Cape Ann, and the next year at Cape Cod, both of which essays were, through his ignorance and self-will, unsuccessful.

At Monamet, now Sandwich, near Cape Cod, whither the settlers removed about that time, a pinnace was built by the Plymouth people in 1627, for the purpose of fishing. But the first vessel of any size constructed there, was a bark built by subscription in 1641. She was of about fifty tons burden, and was estimated to cost two hundred pounds. It appears by the records of Plymouth, there were thirteen proprietors, of whom William Paddy, William Hanburry, and John Barnes, owned each oneeighth part, and William Bradford, John Jenny, John Atwood, Samuel Hicks, George Bower, John Cook, Samuel Jenny, Thomas Willets, Stephen Hopkins and Edward Bangs, each one-sixteenth part.