566. Rice and indigo.—In Carolina rice took the position held by tobacco in other southern colonies. Its cultivation became of practical importance only toward 1700, starting, it is said, from the gift of a small parcel of rough rice by the captain of a ship bound from Madagascar to Liverpool, who was forced to put into Charleston for repairs. The grain found a ready market in southern Europe and in the West Indies, and became soon an important article of export, though the modern method of water culture was not introduced until nearly 1800.
The only other item of southern produce deserving special mention in this place is indigo. This plant, the reader will remember, was the source of a blue dye which at the time was highly prized and which, indeed, has only recently been displaced by anilin colors. Attempts had been made in the early colonial period to raise indigo, but no success attended them until about 1750. After that date the culture flourished in South Carolina and Georgia; aided by a bounty from the British government the planters exported large quantities and secured handsome returns. The preparation of indigo was, however, an unwholesome occupation, as the plant, after being soaked in water, was left to rot, giving out an offensive odor and drawing innumerable flies. It was an indication of progress, therefore, that indigo culture declined rapidly after 1790; planters gladly took up the cotton culture, and the United States soon secured by importation from abroad the ware of which it had formerly produced a surplus.
567. Methods of agriculture.—Though agriculture as a source of wealth overshadowed all other industries in the colonies, it was conducted with methods which we should now consider extremely inefficient and wasteful. Washington wrote to an agricultural specialist in England: “An English farmer must have a very indifferent opinion of our American soil when he hears that an acre of it produces no more than from 8 to 10 bushels of wheat; but he must not forget that in all countries where land is cheap and labor is dear the people prefer cultivating much to cultivating well.”
The plow, the most important implement of agriculture, was still at the time of the Revolution substantially unchanged from the models of ancient times. The mould-board, of wood as the name implies, was sometimes plated with sheet iron or with strips made out of old horseshoes. President Jefferson improved the shape of the mould-board, and about the end of the century the cast-iron plow began to come into common use. The sickle gave place to the scythe and cradle, but threshing was still done with a flail or by driving horses over the grain. There was a marked increase in the interest in agricultural science and methods about the time when the national government began, agricultural societies were founded in many states, and progress thenceforth was more rapid.
568. Forest products; potash.—If the reader, after this review of the agricultural exports of the country at the beginning of its national existence, will refer again to the table above, he will find that export products of considerable importance were derived also from the fisheries and the forests.
The eastern slope of the country was so heavily wooded that trees were regarded rather as a hindrance than a help by the colonists. It was good philosophy, however, to make the best of them; and the British government, during the colonial period, encouraged the export of forest products, to avoid depending on the Baltic countries for the supply of wood and naval stores. The most spectacular export of this description was that of the great masts and spars, which formerly had been reserved for the government by the mark of the broad arrow, and which were hauled out of the woods in winter by fifty yoke or more of oxen. Most of the wood, however, left the country in smaller form: staves and heading, which were sent to the West Indies and there set up into casks and hogsheads for the carriage of sugar products; boards, shingles, etc.
When wood ashes are leached, and the water evaporated, the product is potash; if this be refined by heating it is termed pearlash. It is an impure carbonate of potassium, and at this early stage of chemical industry it had an immense importance in the arts, being used in bleaching, the manufacture of glass, soap, etc. Besides enjoying a ready sale potash had another peculiar advantage in this period; it was, besides the naval stores (pitch, tar, turpentine, rosin), the only wood product which could be readily transported on land. It was, therefore, a great resource when land was cleared; and practically every new settlement, in the northern colonies at least, had its potash works, in which useless wood was converted into a valuable export product.
569. Fisheries.—“The fisheries first and mainly placed New England on its legs.” The people of the northern shore were driven to the sea by the difficulties of life on land; and used the proceeds of the fishing industry as the means of purchasing their imports from abroad, and part even of their food supply from other colonies. They had advantages over European competitors in their nearness to the great fishing grounds and in their skill in building and navigating boats; and though the proportion of the total population engaged in fisheries was never large (about one thousandth at this time), the product was sufficiently important to take a respectable rank among the exports of the country. Every year more than five hundred boats left the towns of the Massachusetts coast, especially Gloucester and Marblehead, for the banks of Newfoundland, while Nantucket and New Bedford became the source of whaling voyages that reached from the Arctic to the Antarctic oceans.
In comparison with the fisheries the fur trade had become of little importance; the European demand for furs was met at this time by territory lying to the north of the limits of the United States.
570. Chief imports, 1791.—The method, or rather the lack of method, followed by the government in keeping its commercial statistics in early days, renders it impossible, unfortunately, to present here a table of imports in 1790 comparable in accuracy and in detail to the table of exports given above. We must content ourselves with the following estimates for the year 1791.