ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND.*

The civil, political, and religious history of the New England colonies has been more thoroughly investigated and carefully written than any other portion of American annals; but no writer before Mr. Weeden has undertaken to treat their history solely on its economic and social side. The methodical manner in which those colonists conducted their business, and the habit of preserving their papers, furnish the most abundant materials for ascertaining their mode of life, and the means by which they early attained all necessary home comforts and a success in commerce and domestic industries which has no parallel in the colonization of any other people.

The Earl of Bellomont, royal Governor of Massachusetts Bay, reported in 1700 that Boston had 194 vessels in the foreign and coasting trade, and that a thousand vessels cleared annually from the port for the Southern colonies, West Indies and Europe, laden with dried fish,

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL HISTORY OF NEW ENGLAND. 1620-1789. By William B.Weeden. In two volumes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin & Co.

lumber, masts, and naval stores, and bringing back the products of all countries. Boston at that time was the "mart town " of the West Indies, and the New Englanders outstripped all other nations in this trade.

The feeble Pilgrim colony which settled at Plymouth in 1620 had no part in this vigorous material development. It was done by the 22,000 Puritans who, under Winthrop, landed in Massachusetts Bay from 1630 to 1640, and by their descendants. Some writers err in using the terms Pilgrims and Puritans as meaning the same people. Both were Englishmen, but their history, habits of thought and proclivities were unlike. The Pilgrims, tamed by persecution and banishment to Holland, were living mainly for the next world. The Puritans, on the other hand, while not regardless of the next world, were for taking in a good share of this world as they went along. In 1640 the emigration to New England ceased, on account of the conflict rising between Parliament and the King, and more persons went back to join the parliamentary army than came over. For the next hundred years the immigration to New England was very small, and not equal to the number of persons who left it to join newer settlements. The rapid increase of population, therefore, during the period was wholly from the natural increase, and obedience to the Scriptural injunction, "Be fruitful and multiply." The number of children in families then seem in our day to be enormous. From that prolific stock has sprung a race of men and women who, by character, energy, and ideas, have largely controlled the tier of Northern States from the Atlantic to the Pacific. the first century and a half, the people of New England showed none of the roving tendencies they have since developed. They were isolated, having little personal intercourse, except in the way of business, with the other colonies or with England. They were multiplying, working out their own problems, and resisting the encroachments of England on their chartered rights. In these controversies they were the most acute diplomatists in the world. manners and speech they retained habits and words which had became obsolete in England. The statement was made about forty years ago by Dr. Palfrey, that one-third of the persons

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then in the United States had a strain of the New England blood which came over before 1640. During the present century the old hive has swarmed, and New England men are found in every community in our land.

The early material prosperity of New England was helped by the political complications in the mother country. From 1630 to 1640, Charles I. and his ministers were too busy with the troubles at home to give much attention to the American colonies. Hence the colonists managed affairs in their own way, and assumed powers and rights which were not defined in their charters. The revolution of 1640, the rule of the Long Parliament and the protectorship of Cromwell, were all in their favor, and gave the colonies twenty more years of undisturbed quiet in which to develop their business and commercial interests. On the restoration of Charles II., in 1660, these interests had become so large it was not easy for King and parliament to curb them.

The difficulties of making a settlement in an inhabited country are great, and are attended

with more or less of discomfort and privation. Nothing in the way of contrast can be greater than the experience of the first settlers of Virginia and those of New England. Both classes were Englishmen, but they were not the same kind of Englishmen. The wretchedness and misery of the earlier years of the settlement at Jamestown would be incredible if the state

ment were not based on reliable testimony and acknowledged by modern Virginia writers. A history of Virginia by Mr. John Esten Cooke, himself a Virginian, appeared in the " American Commonwealths Series" seven years ago; and nothing can be more distressing, or more likely to debase one's estimate of human nature, than the narrative, as told by this Virginian, of what occurred during the first three years of the Virginia colony. The following is an extract from the notice of the book made by me at the time:

"We can understand how men not fitted for such an enterprise should engage in it; how they could miss of success by their quarrels and by weak and inefficient leaders; but it is inconceivable how Englishmen, Cavalier Englishmen, gentlemen-as they were proud to call themselves should in a land of the highest fertility and most genial climate, neglect year after year to put in crops; should beg, borrow, and steal their corn from the Indians, or wait in idleness for it to come from England; and then actually starve by hundreds in a locality which is to-day the paradise of fishermen and sportsmen, and supplies the Chicago market with oysters, soft-shell crabs, and canvas-back ducks. The horrors of this terrible period,' says Mr. Cooke, 'are summed up in a

simple statement: Nearly 500 persons had been left in the colony in September [1609], and six months afterwards there remained not past sixty men, women, and children, most miserable and poor creatures. Of the whole number more than 400 had perished-dead from starvation, or slain by the Indian hatchet. At last they became cannibals. A man killed his wife and ate part of her body. An Indian was killed and buried, but the poorer sort took him up and ate him, and so they did one another, boiled and stewed with roots and herbs.""

The New England colonists solved the food problem in a practical way by purchasing Indian corn of the Narragansett Indians and learning from them the mode of cultivation. Ground recently cleared of wood bore a good Eastern Massachusetts had been swept off by crop without ploughing. As the Indians of pestilence, their arable fields were planted. Excellent fish were abundant, and the shores furnished clams which are a luxury with epicures at this day. They had a bountiful crop of garden vegetables the first year. As commerce was needed to provide commissary stores for the rapidly increasing number of settlers, the ship carpenters were put to work, and on July 4, 1631, Governor Winthrop launched the first vessel, "The Blessing of the Bay," of sixty tons burden. During the next three from Virginia. From the first, the colonists years 10,000 bushels of corn were brought were well fed and happy.

The land was distributed and not sold. The Court made a grant of land for a town, and delegated the distribution of it to seven persons, who laid out the tract and assigned lots to individuals, not on a principle of democratic equality, but on the official and social standing of the individuals, their character, wealth, size of their families, number of servants, etc. Democracy and social equality were then terms which had no meaning. No one could have a

voice in town affairs unless he had been elected a freeman by the Court, and after May 31, 1631, unless he was a church-member. August 3, 1664, this law was repealed by command of the King, although worse restrictions were in force in England. Each town enacted "Town Orders" such as the following: "No person shall entertain inmate for a longer time than three days, without consent of four of the selectmen, and shall pay for every day they offend, sixpence." As to attendance at townmeeting, it was ordered: "If any inhabitant shall fail of making his appearance at 8 of the clock in the morning, he shall pay to the use of the town two shillings; and if he shall absent himself above one quarter of an hour

without leave of the assembly, the like sum." Harsh as these laws seem, they were mild compared with those of Virginia and England at the same time.

It is interesting to see how a people who arranged their social affairs on this basis could conduct business matters, and first, shipbuilding. Hugh Peters, in 1640, at Salem, built a ship of 300 tons, called "The Trial," and in 1642 one of 160 tons was built at Boston. There was little or no money in the colony, and the shipwrights were paid in "truck." The business rapidly extended to towns where timber and living were cheap. Randolph reported in 1676 that the Massachusetts colony had 30 vessels of from 100 to 250 tons, 200 of from 50 to 100 tons, 200 of from 30 to 50 tons, and 300 smaller vessels. Of the smaller class, the "ketch," with two masts carrying lanteen sails, did a coasting trade, and even ventured on foreign voyages. Vessels could be built and sold at a profit of £4 per ton, and they found a ready market in the West Indies and in Holland. They were cheaper, and in strength equal and in sailing qualities superior to European vessels. In 1724 the ship-builders on the Thames complained to the King that their trade was injured on account of New England competition, and that their workmen were emigrating. About this time the schooner was invented at Gloucester, Mass., which holds its precedence among sailing craft to this day, as it will sail faster and can be managed with a smaller crew than a square-rigged vessel. Douglas states that the business of ship-building in New England maintained thirty different classes of tradesmen and artificers. The Pepperill family, at Kittery, Maine, built and employed more than a hundred vessels in the cod-fishery on the Banks, and their ships, laden with dried fish, lumber, and naval stores, sailed all over the world, and brought back cargoes from the West Indies, Portugal, and the Mediterranean.

Rhode Island and Connecticut each entered largely into the shipping business. In 1741 Newport owned 120 vessels; and in 1763, 184 cleared for foreign parts. Providence in 1764 had 54 vessels, of which 40 were in the West India trade and 14 were coasters. Connecticut in 1761 had 45 vessels in foreign trade. A remonstrance to the Lords of the Board of Trade stated that 150 vessels from Rhode Island went to the West Indies annually and brought away 14,000 hogsheads of molasses.

One of the largest factors in the early pros

perity of the New England colonies was the cod-fishery. The Court in 1639 recognized it as an interest of the highest importance, and exempted vessels and outfit from all taxes, and fishermen were relieved from military training. Dried fish found a ready market and good prices in the West Indies and the Catholic countries of Europe. Codfish has an important relation to the early settlements in New England. Gosnold came on the coast in 1602, took great quantities of cod, and named the headland Cape Cod. Many a European vessel which came for ore, returned with codfish and made a profitable voyage. The book is yet to be written on the theme, "The Relation of Codfish to American Colonization." Fifty years before the settlement at Massachusetts Bay, 150 sails of French vessels, 100 Spanish, 50 English, and 30 Biscaymen, were annually on the Banks of Newfoundland fishing for cod; and it is strange that permanent settlement of the American coast was so long delayed. Codfish, which is now spoken of with disrespect, was once an emblem which graced the paper currency of the Massachusetts colony, and was surrounded with the legend, "Staple of the Massachusetts." In the old Town-house in Boston, erected in 1657, was suspended from the ceiling the effigy of a codfish. The building and the codfish were destroyed by fire in 1747. The building was reconstructed and the replica of the codfish replaced in the old State House at the head of State street. It is the oldest codfish in the sea or on land, in salt or in pickle; and now is suspended over the heads of the legislators in the Hall of Representatives in the State House on Beacon Hill. Dr. Franklin recommended the wild turkey for the position now occupied by the eagle on the shield and coinage of our republic. It is unfortunate that the claims of the codfish did not occur to him.

Whaling was another industry in which the colonies engaged very early and surpassed all competitors. Whales were then very numerous, and they were frequently stranded on the coast. Towns made contracts with local syndicates to have all drift and stranded whales at £16 each. The capture of live whales began in 1645 by watching for them from the shore and sending out boats to harpoon them. The south shore of Nantucket was divided into four sections, each of which was patrolled by watchmen. When whales became scarce near the coast, vessels were fitted out to capture them