A School History of the United StatesMcMaster, John Bach
History
A School History of the United States
McMaster, John Bach
United States -- History
_No Power to regulate Trade_.--In the second place, Congress had no
power to regulate trade with foreign nations, or between the states.
This proved a most serious evil. The people of the United States at that
time had few manufactures, because in colonial days Parliament would not
allow them. All the china, glass, hardware, cutlery, woolen goods,
linen, muslin, and a thousand other things were imported from Great
Britain. Before the war the Americans had paid for these goods with
dried fish, lumber, whale oil, flour, tobacco, rice, and indigo, and
with money made by trading in the West Indies. Now Great Britain forbade
Americans to trade with her West Indies. Spain would not make a trade
treaty with us, so we had no trade with her islands, and what was worse,
Great Britain taxed everything that came to her from the United States
unless it came in British ships. As a consequence, very little lumber,
fish, rice, and other of our products went abroad to pay for the immense
quantity of foreign-made goods that came to us. These goods therefore
had to be paid for in money, which about 1785 began to be boxed up and
shipped to London. When the people found that specie was being carried
out of the country, they began to hoard it, so that by 1786 none was in
circulation.
%170. Paper Money issued.%--This left the people without any money
with which to pay wages, or buy food and clothing, and led at once to a
demand that the states should print paper money and loan it to their
citizens. Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, North and
South Carolina, and Georgia did so. But the money was no sooner issued
than the merchants and others who had goods to sell refused to take it,
whereupon in some of the states laws called "tender acts" were passed to
compel people to use the paper. This merely put an end to business, for
nobody would sell. In Massachusetts, when the legislature refused to
issue paper money, many of the persons who owed debts assembled, and,
during 1786-87, under the lead of Daniel Shays, a Revolutionary soldier,
prevented the courts from trying suits for the recovery of money owed or
loaned.[1]
[Footnote 1: Read McMaster's _History of the People of the United
States_, Vol. I., pp. 281-295, 304-329, 331-340; Fiske's _Critical
Period of American History_, pp. 168-186.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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