THE growth of population just described implies a corresponding development of economic activity, partly on lines already indicated and partly in new directions.¹ In the south the most important characteristic of the period is the gradual rounding out and crystallizing of the plantation system. In Virginia during the seventeenth century the tendency to form large estates, favored by the physiographical conditions and the almost exclusive cultivation of tobacco, was somewhat restrained by the rule limiting grants to fifty acres for each person actually imported. These head-rights gradually became more valuable, till, in 1699, the council fixed a definite purchase price for land in sterling money. Very large grants now became common: Governor Spotswood signed on one occasion several grants of ten, twenty, and forty thousand acres, including an aggregate of over eighty-six thousand for himself. Theoretically, grants were

conditioned upon occupation and improvement, but the land administration was in the hands of the governor and council, or even sometimes of the councillors alone, who, being themselves large landowners, were lax in enforcing rules which operated against the interests of their class. An extreme illustration is furnished by the record of William Byrd, of Westover, the most famous Virginian planter of the early eighteenth century. Byrd inherited from his father an estate of some twenty-six thousand acres, added to it at various times by fresh grants, one of which amounted to over one hundred thousand acres, and “owned when he died no less than 179,440 acres of the best land in Virginia.”¹

     Similar laxity in other parts of the south resulted in a similar absorption of landed estates in comparatively few hands; the tendency was least marked in North Carolina and most so in South Carolina. The Carolina proprietors had begun by granting some large tracts, or baronies; but they afterwards tried to keep grants within more moderate limits; and, under the royal government, efforts were made to resume lands which had been improperly taken out in the first instance or never actually occupied. The best lands of South Carolina were monopolized by a few landholders and speculators; and after the overthrow of the proprietary government their claims were confirmed by a

statute of 1731 which, though strongly opposed by the royal surveyor-general, finally escaped disallowance. By 1732 it was estimated that there were not “one thousand acres within one hundred miles of Charleston or within twenty miles of a river or navigable creek which were not already taken possession of.” Many estates so formed were held together by the system of entails, which in Virginia during the early years of the eighteenth century became even stricter than that of the mother-country. Land and slaves became the dominant passion of the planter, who could rarely be induced “to sell or even lease the smallest portion of his lands.”¹

     As the land system developed, the growing import trade in slaves furnished the kind of cheap labor desired for the great estates, and, especially in Virginia and South Carolina, gradually superseded the system of white service in the fields. In Maryland, however, white service continued to be important.² Notwithstanding all efforts towards diversification, Virginia and Maryland continued during this period to devote themselves almost wholly to tobacco. For the marketing of this product the planter was dependent upon the London merchants, who sent out their ships, not to a few trading ports in the colony, but up the rivers to the individual

plantations, though the large planters sometimes acted as agents for their neighbors. The attempts to establish towns at which tobacco might be collected for export, especially by the small planters, were almost wholly unsuccessful. The planters complained of exorbitant freight rates, and, indeed, of difficulty in securing regular transportation on any terms. The small planters suffered most; but even the larger planters with their regular correspondents in London sometimes failed to secure sufficient shipping.

     The London merchant was the planter’s agent in the purchase of goods as well as in the sale of tobacco, and the natural result was a large development of the credit system. The long delays in exchange between America and England often left the planter in considerable uncertainty as to the exact extent of his balance. Thus a Virginia planter wrote to his agent in 1695, pressing him to send his account at once, “for not knowing how my account stands, I dare not send for goods though my wants are very great and pressing.” This system certainly did not promote sound business methods, and many of the larger land-owners were, like Byrd himself, heavily in debt to their English agents.¹

     It was essential to the prosperity of the tobacco colonies that their products should maintain a good

standard of quality, and this need was a frequent subject of provincial legislation. In this respect Maryland was less fortunate than Virginia, and her trade was seriously depressed in consequence. Bills for the inspection of tobacco, with a view to enhancing its price, were strongly urged by the small planters, who were relatively strong in the lower house; but the insistence of the latter on reducing the fees of public officers, regularly paid in tobacco, prevented the passage of such a measure by the officeholders in the council, until 1747, when a satisfactory compromise was reached and efficient inspection secured.¹

     No one product in the Carolinas had quite the same position in provincial life which tobacco had in Virginia, although in South Carolina rice soon became the chief article of export, and competed with great success in the markets of southern Europe. This promising trade was checked in 1705 by an English statute which added rice to the list of enumerated articles; but in 1730 the restriction was removed as to ports south of Cape Finisterre, and the trade revived, though not on the scale which had been hoped for. Indigo, later second to rice as a staple export, was not produced in considerable quantities until near the middle of the eighteenth century. Both the Carolinas produced considerable quantities of lumber, of naval stores, including pitch and tar, and of provisions; but North

Carolina had no one important staple, and her aggregate production for export was comparatively small. The most striking economic difference between South Carolina trade and that of the tobacco colonies was its concentration in the one important port of Charleston; but there was no such development in North Carolina.¹

     The engrossing of estates by a few large owners and the increasing use of slave-labor checked the development of an independent small-farmer class and discouraged immigration. In North Carolina, however, where land could be had on easier terms, and where governmental authority was comparatively lax, the population was quite different from that of tide-water Virginia or South Carolina, and the large planter did not have the same overshadowing importance as in the two neighboring colonies. At the other extreme of the social scale stood the shiftless farmers whom William Byrd described so effectively in his History of the Dividing Line, who kept “so many Sabbaths every week, that their disregard of the Seventh Day has no manner of cruelty in it, either to Servants or Cattle”; they loitered “away their lives, like Solomon’s Sluggard, with their Arms across, and at the Winding up of the Year scarcely have Bread to Eat.” Yet some allowance must be made for the prejudices of a Virginia

planter; and undoubtedly there stood between these two extremes a substantial though less picturesque class of small farmers.¹

     In the second quarter of the century the Scotch-Irish and German immigration was just beginning to complicate the social structure of the planter colonies by bringing in a class of settlers who cultivated comparatively small farms on the frontiers, without slaves for the most part, and produced wheat instead of tobacco or rice. They were still, however, of minor importance in southern life.

     The industrial life of the northern colonies was developing on lines clearly divergent from that of the south. There is nothing comparable to the great plantation systems of Virginia and South Carolina, except among some exceptional communities like the Narragansett and Hudson River farmers. In New York the English governors after the revolution of 1689 continued the practice of lavish grants begun under the Dutch regime; but these grants failed to develop to any large extent a real plantation system, for the number of slaves imported was comparatively small. On the other hand, few immigrants cared to become tenants on the great estates. The chief effect of this unwise administration was, therefore, to divert immigration to other provinces. Generally speaking, therefore, the middle colonies as well as those of New England continued to be occupied by comparatively small holdings,

not isolated economic units like the Virginia plantations, but grouped together in more or less compact communities.¹

     The labor system of the north shows a similar divergence from southern conditions. Negroes were few, and though white servants were numerous in Pennsylvania, even they did not form a permanently servile class. Aristocratic usages and traditions existed, but the general trend of economic development was towards a democratic society. The greater variety of northern industry appeared the moment one passed from the Chesapeake colonies into Pennsylvania. In 1700, Robert Quarry reported that the Pennsylvanians as the result of their industry had made “bread, flower and Beer a drugg in all the Markets in the West Indies.” In later years beef, pork, and lumber appear as important articles of export. The agricultural products of New York and New Jersey were in the main similar to those of Pennsylvania. In a word, the middle colonies were the great producers of provisions.²

     The colonists still depended mainly upon England for their clothing and other manufactures, though their early experiments in this field were important enough to arouse the jealousy of the mother-country. In these enterprises the southern colonies were observed

to be far less active and successful than those of the north. The Board of Trade declared in 1732 that there were “more trades carried on and manufactures set up in the provinces on the continent of America to the northward of Virginia, prejudicial to the trade and manufactures of Great Britain, particularly in New England, than in any other of the British colonies.”¹

     The colonial woollen industry which Parliament had attempted to check by the act of 1698 continued to be an object of special interest and suspicion to the Board of Trade. During Queen Anne’s War and the consequent interruption of trade, there was apparently a considerable development of the industry, especially in New England. In 1708 a zealous royal official in New England made the extreme assertion with regard to the country people that “not one in forty but wears his own carding, spinning, etc.”; and soon afterwards Governor Dudley reported that “the people here clothe themselves with their own wool, though they would be glad to buy English wool if they could afford it.” Later reports, however, indicate no considerable development beyond the production of the coarser grades for domestic use, which went on more or less in all the colonies. There were also some manufactures of linen, as among the Germans of Pennsylvania and the Scotch-Irish of New Hampshire. One detail of clothing acquired during this period

an unusual historic importance. In 1721 the Board of Trade noted in its report on New England that “some hatters have lately set up their trade in the principal Towns.” The industry also appeared in New York, presently came to the knowledge of the London Company of Feltmakers, and finally called forth an act of Parliament in 1732 prohibiting the export of hats from one colony to another, requiring for makers of hats an apprenticeship of seven years, and forbidding any master to employ more than two apprentices.¹

     One other class of industrial experiments excited the interest and jealousy of the mother-country. These were the small beginnings of the American iron industry, which was carried on in several of the continental colonies during the early years of the eighteenth century. Iron was then mined in New England, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, and all of these colonies began the rudimentary forms of iron manufacture in charcoal furnaces. In the Board of Trade reports for 1721 the iron works of New England are referred to as furnishing small quantities for common use, but English iron was said to have a better reputation and to be more generally used. In 1732 the Massachusetts colonists were said by one official to make “all sorts of iron-work for shipping”; but the governor, while

admitting that the local iron-works afforded the people iron for some common necessaries, asserted that British iron was wholly used for the shipping and that the colonial product could not supply one-twentieth of the local demand. William Byrd, about the same time, describes several iron-works in Virginia in which the former Governor Spotswood, among others, was interested. During the next decade New England sent insignificant quantities of pig-iron to England; but Pennsylvania, and especially the Chesapeake colonies, exported more largely.¹

     There was a considerable sentiment in England in favor of developing the iron resources of the colonies; but the more finished products were objectionable as likely to come into competition with those of the mother-country. In 1719 it was proposed in Parliament to prohibit the manufacture of iron wares or even of bar-iron. About twenty years later there was a lively agitation in favor of encouraging the importation of partially worked iron from the colonies on the ground that it would stimulate the more finished manufactures of the mother-country and would also free English merchants from their dependence on Sweden and Russia. The discussion did not take shape in legislation

until 1750, when an act was passed allowing the free importation into England of colonial pig-iron, and, at the port of London, of bar-iron, but prohibiting American manufacture beyond that stage. Probably the colonial industry was not sufficiently advanced to suffer seriously from this statutory prohibition; but it doubtless caused some irritation.¹

     Two kinds of colonial manufacture which were thoroughly established and carried far beyond provincial limits were the building of ships and the distilling of rum, and the chief seat of both was New England. New-Englanders had been ship-builders almost from the first; but the industry assumed much larger proportions during the first half of the eighteenth century. The small craft of the seventeenth century were gradually replaced by larger ones, though even in 1780 a ship of five hundred tons was considered unusually large. New England ship-building was not confined to a few leading ports but spread to nearly all the coast and river towns; and Pennsylvania also developed a considerable ship-building industry. Both Pennsylvania and New England built ships not merely for their own use, but for sale abroad, in the West Indies and in Europe; hence English jealousies were again aroused, and the ship-carpenters of the Thames

complained of the New England competition. Richard West, the legal adviser of the Board of Trade, reported that though their grievance might be well founded, “they might as well complain of shipbuilding at Bristol, because the acts of navigation recognized colonial ships as English built.” The Board of Trade apparently sympathized with the ship-masters, but nothing was done.¹

     During the same period the manufacture of rum first assumed large proportions. The chief seats of this industry were Massachusetts and Rhode Island, especially Newport, and it was made from West Indian molasses. It was not only consumed at home, but was regarded as indispensable for the fishing fleets, the Indian trade, and the African slave-trade.¹