TRADE AND COMMERCE.--Life in the New England colonies was very unlike that in Virginia. People dwelt in villages, cultivated small farms, and were largely engaged in trade and commerce. They bartered corn and peas, woolen cloth, and wampum with the Indians for beaver skins, which they sent to England to pay for articles bought from the mother country. They salted cod, dried alewives and bass, made boards and staves for hogsheads, and sent all these to the West Indies to be exchanged for sugar, molasses, and other products of the tropics. They built ships in the seaports where lumber was cheap, and sold them abroad. They traded with Spain and Portugal, England, the Netherlands, and Virginia. [Illustration: STONE HAND MILL. Brought from England in 1630 and used for grinding flour. Now in Essex Hall, Salem, Mass.] SCARCITY OF MONEY.--The colonists brought little money with them, and much of what they brought went back to England to pay for supplies. Buying and trading in New England, therefore, had to be done largely without gold or silver. Beaver skins and wampum, bushels of corn, produce, cattle, and even bullets were used as money and passed at rates fixed by law. [13] In the hope of remedying the scarcity of money, the government of Massachusetts ordered that a mint should be set up, and in 1652 Spanish silver brought from the West Indies was melted and coined into Pine Tree currency. [14] [Illustration: SPINNING WOOL.] MANUFACTURES.--That less gold and silver might go abroad for supplies, home manufactures were encouraged by gifts of money, by exemptions of property from taxation, and by excusing workmen from military duty. The cultivation of flax was encouraged, children were taught to spin and weave, and glass works, salt works, and iron furnaces were started. [Illustration: YARN REEL. [15] In Essex Hall, Salem, Mass.] On the farms utensils and furniture were generally made in the household. Almost everything was made of wood, as spoons, tankards, pails, firkins, hinges for cupboard and closet doors, latches, plows, and harrows. Every boy learned to use his jack-knife, and could make brooms from birch trees, bowls and dippers and bottles from gourds, and butter paddles from red cherry. The women made soap and candles, carded wool, spun, wove, bleached or dyed the linen and woolen cloth, and made the garments for the family. They knit mittens and stockings, made straw hats and baskets, and plucked the feathers from live geese for beds and pillows.