A School History of the United StatesMcMaster, John Bach
History
A School History of the United States
McMaster, John Bach
United States -- History
In New Jersey the population was almost entirely English, but in
Pennsylvania it was as mixed as in New York. Around Philadelphia the
English predominated, but with them were mingled Swedes, Dutch, Welsh,
Germans, and Scotch-Irish. Taken together, the Germans and the
Scotch-Irish far outnumbered the English, and made up the mass of the
population between the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna rivers. Both were
self-willed and stubborn, and they were utterly unable to get along
together peaceably, so that their settlements ran across the state in
two parallel bands, in one of which whole regions could be found in
which not a word of English was spoken. Indeed, then, and long after the
nineteenth century began, the laws of Pennsylvania were printed both in
English and in German. The chief occupation of the people was farming;
and it is safe to say that no such farms, no such cattle, no such grain,
flour, provisions, could be found in any other part of the country.
Lumber, too, was cut and sold in great quantities; and along the
frontier there was a lively fur trade with the Indians. At Philadelphia
was centered a fine trade with Europe and the West Indies. Had it not
been for the action of the mother country, manufactures would have
flourished greatly; even as it was, iron and paper were manufactured in
considerable quantities.
%100. Occupations in the Southern Colonies.%--South of Pennsylvania,
and especially south of the Potomac River, lay a region utterly unlike
anything to the north of it. In Virginia, there were no cities, no large
towns, no centers of population. At an early day in the history of the
colony the legislature had attempted to remedy this, and had ordered
towns to be built at certain places, had made them the only ports where
ships from abroad could be entered, had established tobacco warehouses
in them, had offered special privileges to tradesmen who would settle in
them, and had provided that each should have a market and a fair. But
the success was small, and Fredericksburg and Alexandria and Petersburg
were straggling villages. Jamestown, the old capital, had by this time
ceased to exist. Williamsburg, the new capital, was a village of 200
houses. There was no business, no incentive in Virginia to build towns.
The planters owned immense plantations along the river banks, and raised
tobacco, which, when gathered, cured, and packed into hogsheads, was
rolled away to the nearest wharf for inspection and shipment to London.
In those early days, when good roads were unknown and wagons few, shafts
were attached to each hogshead by iron bolts driven into the heads, and
the cask was thus turned into a huge roller. With each year's crop would
go a long list of articles of every sort,--hardware, glass, crockery,
clothing, furniture, household utensils, wines,--which the agent was
instructed to buy with the proceeds of the tobacco and send back to the
planter when the ships came a year later for another crop. The country
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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