A Brief History of the United StatesMcMaster, John Bach
History
A Brief History of the United States
McMaster, John Bach
United States -- History
INDUSTRIES.--In New England the people lived on their own farms, which
they cultivated with their own hands and with the help of their children,
or engaged in codfishing, whaling, lumbering, shipbuilding, and commerce.
They built ships and sold them abroad, or used them to carry away the
products of New England to the South, to the ports of France, Spain,
Russia, Sweden, the West Indies, and even to China. To the West Indies
went horses, cattle, lumber, salt fish, and mules; and from them came
sugar, molasses, coffee, indigo, wines. From Sweden and Russia came iron,
hemp, and duck.
The Middle States produced much grain and flour. New York had lost much of
her fur trade because of the British control of the frontier posts; but
her exports of flour, grain, lumber, leather, and what not, in 1791, were
valued at nearly $3,000,000. The people of Pennsylvania made lumber,
linen, flour, paper, iron; built ships; carried on a prosperous commerce
with foreign lands and a good fur trade with the Indians.
[Illustration: TRADING CANOE.]
In Maryland and Virginia the staple crop was still tobacco, but they also
produced much grain and flour. North Carolina produced tar, pitch, resin,
turpentine, and lumber. Some rice and tobacco were raised. Great herds of
cattle and hogs ran wild. In South Carolina rice was the most important
crop. Indigo, once an important product, had declined since the
Revolution, and cotton was only just beginning to be grown for export.
From the back country came tar, pitch, turpentine, and beaver, deer, and
bear skins for export.
THE FUR TRADE.--The region of the Great Lakes, where the British still
held the forts on the American side of the boundary, was the chief seat of
the fur trade. Goods for Indian use were brought from England to Montreal
and Quebec, and carried in canoes to Oswego, Niagara, Detroit, Mackinaw,
Sault Ste. Marie (map, p. 194), and thence scattered over the Northwest.
[15]
SUMMARY
1. In 1789 the states had governments less democratic than at present; in
general only property owners could vote and hold office.
2. The states were all in debt, and Congress had incurred besides a large
national debt.
3. The population was less than 4,000,000, mostly on the Atlantic
seaboard.
4. Cities were few and small, without street cars, pavements, water works,
gas or electric lights, public libraries or museums, letter carriers, or
paid firemen. Everywhere many of the common conveniences of modern life
were unknown.
5. Travel was slow and tiresome, because there were no railroads,
steamboats, or automobiles.
6. Occupations were far fewer than now, wages lower, and hours of labor
longer. Slavery had been abolished, or was being gradually stopped, in New
England and Pennsylvania, but existed in all the other states; and in the
South nearly all the labor was done by slaves.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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