Though the labor of the colonists was mainly spent in farming,there was a steady growth in industrial and commercial pursuits.Most of the staple industries of to-day,not omitting iron and textiles,have their beginnings in colonial times.Manufacturing and trade soon gave rise to towns which enjoyed an importance all out of proportion to their numbers.The great centers of commerce and finance on the seaboard originated in the days when the king of England was "lord of these dominions."
Textile Manufacture as a Domestic Industry.-Colonial women,in addi-tion to sharing every hardship of pioneering,often the heavy labor of the open field,developed in the course of time a national industry which was almost ex-clusively their own.Wool and flax were raised in abundance in the North andSpinning in Colonial TimesSouth."Every farm house,"says Coman,the economic historian,"was a workshop where the women spun and wove the serges,kerseys,and linsey-woolseys which served for the common wear."By the close of the seventeenth century,New England manufactured cloth in sufficient quanti-ties to export it to the Southern colonies and to the West Indies.As the industry developed,mills were erected for the more difficult process of dyeing,weaving,and fulling,but carding and spinning contin-ued to be done in the home.The Dutch of New Netherland,the Swedes of Delaware,and the Scotch-Irish of the interior "werenot one whit behind their Yankee neighbors."
The importance of this enterprise to British economic life can hardly be overestimated.For many a century the English had employed their fine woolen cloth as the chief staple in a lucrative foreign trade,and the government had come to look upon it as an object of special interest and protection.When the colonies were established,both merchants and statesmen naturally expected to maintain a monopoly of increasing value;but before long the Americans,instead of buying cloth,especially of the coarser varieties,were making it to sell.In the place of customers,here were rivals.In the place of helpless reliance upon English markets,here was the germ of economic independence.
If British merchants had not discovered it in the ordinary course of trade,observant officers in the provinces would have conveyed the news to them.Even in the early years of the eighteenth century the royal governor of New York wrote of the industrious Americans to his home government:"The consequence will be that if they can clothe themselves once,not only comfortably,but handsomely too,without the help of England,they who already are not very fond of submitting to government will soon think of putting in execution designs they have long harboured in their breasts.This will not seem strange when you consider what sort of people this country is inhabited by."
The Iron Industry.-Almost equally widespread was the art of iron working-one of the earliest and most picturesque of colonial industries.Lynn,Massachu-setts,had a forge and skilled artisans within fifteen years after the founding of Boston.The smelting of iron began at New London and New Haven about 1658;in Litchfield county,Connecticut,a few years later;at Great Barrington,Massa-chusetts,in 1731;and near by at Lenox some thirty years after that.New Jersey had iron works at Shrewsbury within ten years after the founding of the colo-ny in 1665.Iron forges appeared in the valleys of the Delaware and the Susque-hanna early in the following century,and iron masters then laid the founda-tions of fortunes in a region destined to become one of the great iron centersColonial Iron Pots and Pansof the world.Virginia began iron working in the year that saw the introduction of slavery.Although the industry soon lapsed,it was renewed and flourished in the eighteenth century.Governor Spotswood was called the "Tubal Cain"of the Old Dominion because he placed the industry on a firm foundation.Indeed it seems that every colony,except Georgia,had its iron foundry.Nails,wire,me-tallic ware,chains,anchors,bar and pig iron were made in large quantities;and Great Britain,by an act in 1750,encouraged the colonists to export rough iron to the British Islands.
Shipbuilding.-Of all the specialized industries in the colonies,shipbuild-ing was the most important.The abundance of fir for masts,oak for timbers and boards,pitch for tar and turpentine,and hemp for rope made the way of the shipbuilder easy.
Early in the seven-teenth century a ship was built at New Am-sterdam,and by the middle of that cen-tury shipyards were scattered along the New England coast at Newburyport,Salem,New Bedford,New-port,Providence,NewShipping in Old Salem
London,and New Haven.Yards at Albany and Poughkeepsie in New York built ships for the trade of that colony with England and the Indies.Wilmington and Philadelphia soon entered the race and outdistanced New York,though unable to equal the pace set by New England.While Maryland,Virginia,and South Carolina also built ships,Southern interest was mainly confined to the lucrative business of producing ship materials:fir,cedar,hemp,and tar.