Summary Relation of the Maritime Industries to Agriculture. In concluding this survey of the peculiar economic characteristics of life in the coast and river towns, let us return to the inquiries propounded at the beginning of this chapter. We have endeavored to answer these questions specifically in the detailed consideration of the various groups of towns. In general these answers lead us to the conclusion that the maritime industries were not, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, sharply differentiated from agriculture. As Tudor pointed out, the coast population were economically a race of amphibians. They got their living both from the sea and from the land; the proportion of their income which was derived from either element depending partly on the fertility of the soil in their particular locality and partly on the advantages of their situation for fishing and trading. Where the soil was sterile and sandy, as on the eastern end of Cape Cod and on Nantucket, there we found almost the entire support of the inhabitants obtained from maritime industries; but in almost all the other towns on the coast and rivers, agriculture was still the fundamental industry, as it was inland, and fishing and trading were auxiliary occupations. As accessory sources of income for farmers, the maritime industries were comparable to the occasional small manufactures carried on in inland towns; in neither case was large scale enterprise to be found, nor the sharp separation of these employments from agriculture. Only in a few seaport towns did we find a strictly non-agricultural population, deriving their incomes from trading and fishing and purchasing therewith the products of inland farmers. Such towns were found along the north shore of Massachusetts Bay, on Cape Cod and the island of Nantucket, along the coast of Long Island Sound, and in the valley of the Connecticut River. How important were considerably different. Here the population was only 3,300 on 42 square miles. The land was more fertile than that of Nantucket, and although a few whale ships were sent out each year from Edgarton, the principal port, the majority of inhabitants were supported by agriculture. The export of a commercial product, the wool shorn from their large flocks of sheep, was the chief point of difference between the farm life in these towns and those on the mainland. See Morse, Gazetteer, 1810. Arts. Martha's Vineyard and Edgarton. 1 "Most of the people near the sea coast of the latter have been sailors for a time and occasionally go on some short voyage, if they find they can earn a few more dollars than by staying at home. There are many villages, where a population of farmers would be found to be good sailors in a moment if the occasion required it." Tudor, William. Letters on the Eastern States. 2 ed. Boston. 1821. p. 118, note. to the farmers of southern New England was the market thus supplied? That the farmers in the near vicinity, say within a radius of fifteen or twenty miles, of the largest city, Boston, benefited largely from their opportunities to sell farm produce, is a well-established fact.1 The area affected by the markets in such smaller cities as Salem, Newburyport, Providence, and Nantucket was narrower in proportion as the numbers of their inhabitants were less. Finally in a third class of towns of 3,000 to 7,000 population, such as New Haven, New London, Norwich, Middletown and Hartford, farming seems to have been the occupation of about one-half the inhabitants, and consequently the influence of their markets was hardly appreciable. A simple calculation of the relative strength of the commercial as compared with the agricultural population may serve to make this summary more concrete: In the nine towns on Massachusetts Bay there were. . . . In the town of Nantucket..... In five towns on Long Island Sound.. In two towns on the Connecticut River... Total.. 85,000 persons 11,000 6,800 32,000 66 If we accept the figures for New Haven as typical of the conditions in the last two groups of towns we may subtract one-half the population of each of these groups, as representing the agricultural element in these towns. The total then becomes 124,300. This figure, it should be understood, does not represent a total of all persons in the three states of southern New England who were engaged in nonagricultural activities. It is intended merely to give an approximate indication of the size of commercial and manufacturing groups who were so concentrated as to furnish a definite and reliable market for the sale of agricultural products. These groups amounted to 15.4 per cent of the total of the three states, 809,000 in 1810; but their importance to the farmers at large was much less than this figure would indicate. A glance at the map (facing p. 277) will show how inaccessible this market was to the great body of inland farmers. Of what importance to a farmer in the center of Worcester County, Massachusetts, or in Tolland County, Connecticut, was the market in Salem, Newburyport or Nantucket? We have already seen that 1 See supra, pp. 278-279. 2 As we have seen in the case of New Haven, 45 per cent. were so occupied; this proportion would naturally have been larger in the smaller towns in this class. the area affected by the largest market in southern New England extended only some fifteen or twenty miles from the city. A consideration of the transportation system of the time in a later section1 will make even clearer that the fringe of commercial towns on the seacoast must have depended for its agricultural products upon farmers in towns adjoining, or only a few miles distant. Some exception must, of course, be made in favor of towns located on navigable rivers such as the Connecticut, the Thames, the Housatonic and the Merrimac; but in general the market in commercial towns can scarcely be said to have had any influence on the prosperity of the population or on agricultural methods in the inland region. 1 See Chapter IV. CHAPTER III. COMMERICAL RELATIONS OF SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND WITH THE SOUTHERN STATES AND THE WEST INDIES. In our reconstruction of the economic environment of the inland farmer, we must not neglect to consider the possibility of his exporting some of the produce of his land to regions outside of New England. A market in a foreign country or in some of the other states of the Union would have been, to some extent at least, a compensation for the lack of a market in commercial and industrial towns at home, and would have modified to that extent the farmer's economic position. Markets Outside New England: (a) New York City. Outside New England there were three districts whose inhabitants purchased food-stuffs from the farmers in the towns of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Connecticut. These were: (1) the city of New York; (2) the Southern states, and (3) the West India Islands. In the nearest of these markets, the city of New York, there was a population of nearly 100,000, concentrated on the island of Manhattan and a few smaller islands. This population, supported largely by commerce, offered a market larger than any in New England. It was easily accessible to the coast towns of Connecticut and Rhode Island and, to a less degree, to the towns of Berkshire County in Massachusetts and Litchfield County in Connecticut, by way of the Hudson River. However, in this case the New England farmers had to meet the competition of the energetic and progressive Dutch settlers on Long Island,1 as well as of the nearer situated towns of eastern New Jersey and of those in New York state along the Hudson River. We have seen that almost every town along the Sound as far east as Providence sent out small sloops to carry firewood and agricultural produce to New York.2 In Fairfield County, the nearest county in Connecticut, the coast towns had a fleet of 20 or 30 such vessels regularly employed in transporting grain, flour, beef, pork, and potatoes 1 See Weld, Isaac, Jun., Travels through the States of North America, during the Years 1795, 1796, and 1797. 4 ed. 2 vols. London. 1807. II. 372-373. 2 Supra, p. 283. to the city.1 New Haven seems to have traded with New York more extensively than any other port on the Sound. In his Statistical Account of the former city, President Dwight included a statement of this coasting trade for the year 1801, compiled from the shipping books of merchants. The largest items were: Cheese, 220,000 lbs.; pork and beef hams, 24,000 lbs.; pork, 1,900 bbls.; beef, 1,700 bbls.; butter, 800 firkins; lard, 600 firkins; corn meal, 1,000 hhds., and 1,200 bbls.; rye flour, 230 bbls.; barley, 1,500 bu.; Indian corn, 300 bu.; rye, 200 bu.; oats, 530 bu. The only vegetables shipped were beans, 280 bu.; and potatoes, 160 bu.2 Although these figures do not indicate any great amount of trade, yet it would be a mistake to judge the importance of the New York market by figures such as these, for the bulk of these products were not consumed in the city but trans-shipped to the West Indies.3 (b) Regions of Specialized Agriculture. In order that a population supported by agriculture alone may furnish a market for the farmers in another region, it is necessary that the former shall be raising a staple product which they can sell to a wide market. To the cultivation of this staple they will then find it profitable to devote all their labor and capital. In order to secure the greatest profit from the comparative advantage which they have in the cultivation of a peculiar product, they will neglect general agriculture and rely for their food supply upon their ability to purchase from farmers in regions where such specialization has not been found profitable. Thus one of the first forms of the geographical division of labor arises. Such a specialization was to be found in 1810 in three areas to the southward of New England. There were: (1) the tobacco plantations of the Chesapeake lowlands in Virginia and Maryland, (2) the rice and cotton plantations of the coastal plains of South Carolina and Georgia, and (3) the sugar plantations of the West India Islands. (1) The Chesapeake Lowlands. Cheap water transportation made these three areas almost equally accessible to the New England farmer, but their importance to him varied widely in proportion to the competition which he must face from the back-country districts of general agriculture. The size of 1 Pease and Niles, Gazetteer, art. Fairfield. 2 Op. cit., pp. 67-68. Kendall, Travels, I. 9. |