Some domestic industries.
It would be too much to say that there was no manufacturing done in colonial Virginia. There were probably few if any plantations where the spinning-wheel and hand-loom were not busy. Female slaves and white servants wove coarse cloth and made it up into suits of clothes[181] for people of their sort, and doubtless for some of the small planters. Such artisans as blacksmiths, carpenters, and coopers, shipwrights, tailors, tanners, and shoemakers were often to be found among the indentured servants. Boys of this class were sometimes upon their arrival made apprentices in these crafts. Occasionally negro slaves became more or less skilled as workmen, especially as coopers and joiners. There must always have been some demand for the labour of white freedmen acquainted with any of the mechanical arts, and in fact instances of free labourers in these departments are found. There can be no doubt, however, that the style of work thus attained was apt to be unsatisfactory; for we find such planters as Colonel Byrd and Colonel Fitzhugh, late in the seventeenth century, sending to England for skilled workmen, and offering to pay very high wages, on the ground that it was wasting money to employ such workmen as were to be had in the colony.[182]
Beverley’s complaint against his countrymen.
The historian Beverley, who sometimes indulged himself (like the late Matthew Arnold) in upbraiding his fellow-countrymen for their own good, says of the Virginians in 1705: “They have their Cloathing of all sorts from England, as Linnen, Woollen, Silk, Hats, and Leather. Yet Flax and Hemp grow no where in the World, better than there; their Sheep yield a mighty Increase, and bear good Fleeces, but they shear them only to cool them. The Mulberry-Tree, whose Leaf is the proper Food of the Silk-worm, grows there like a Weed, and Silk-worms have been observ’d to thrive extreamly, and without any hazard. The very Furrs that their Hats are made of, perhaps go first from thence; and most of their Hides lie and rot, or are made use of, only for covering dry Goods, in a leaky House. Indeed some few Hides with much adoe are tann’d, and made into Servants Shoes; but at so careless a rate, that the Planters don’t care to buy them, if they can get others; and sometimes perhaps a better manager than ordinary, will vouchsafe to make a pair of Breeches of a Deer-Skin. Nay, they are such abominable Ill-husbands, that tho’ their Country be over-run with Wood, yet they have all their Wooden Ware from England; their Cabinets, Chairs, Tables, Stools, Chests, Boxes, Cart-wheels, and all other things, even so much as their Bowls, and Birchen Brooms, to the Eternal Reproach of their Laziness.... Thus they depend altogether upon the Liberality of Nature, without endeavoring to improve its Gifts, by Art or Industry. They spunge upon the Blessings of a warm Sun, and a fruitful Soil, and almost grutch the Pains of gathering in the Bounties of the Earth. I should be asham’d to publish this slothful Indolence of my Countrymen, but that I hope it will rouse them out of their Lethargy, and excite them to make the most of all those happy Advantages which Nature has given them; and if it does this, I am sure they will have the Goodness to forgive me.”[183]
True state of the case.
It was not, however, as Mr. Bruce reminds us, from any “inherent repugnance” that Englishmen in Virginia did not take kindly to manufactures, and perhaps the good Beverley’s reproachful tone is a trifle overdone. When the planter could get sharp knives, well-made boots, and fine blankets at his own wharf, simply by handing over to the skipper a few hogsheads of tobacco, he was not greatly to be blamed for preferring them to such dull knives, clumsy boots, and coarse blankets as could be made by the workmen within reach. Many inconveniences, however, grew out of the absence of local means for supplying local needs, and I have little doubt that sundry trades and crafts could have been made to flourish much better than they did, had it not been for the baneful effects of a tobacco currency, which we shall presently have to consider.
Absence of town life.
The most conspicuous result of the absorption of all activities in tobacco-planting, and the absence of developed arts and trades, was the non-existence of town life. At the beginning of the eighteenth century there was hardly so much as a village in Virginia, unless we make an exception in honour of Williamsburg, the new seat of government and of the college. By the middle of the century Williamsburg contained about 200 houses, chiefly wooden, and its streets were unpaved. Richmond, founded in 1737, had a population of 3,761 in the census of 1790. The growth of Norfolk, founded in 1705, was exceptional. The trade with the West Indies, for sugar, molasses, and rum, tended to become concentrated there, and the proximity of North Carolina made it a mart for lumber at a time when Virginia forests in the lower tidewater region had been largely cleared away. Colonel Byrd in 1728 says of the Norfolk people: “They have a pretty deal of lumber from the borderers on the Dismal, who make bold with the king’s land thereabouts, without the least ceremony.” Besides boards and shingles, they sent beef and pork to the West Indies, and it was not unusual to see a score of sloops and brigantines riding in the noble harbour. Under these favourable circumstances the population of Norfolk had come by 1776 to be about 6,000. At that time Philadelphia had some 35,000 inhabitants, and New York 25,000, though the population of their two states taken together scarcely equalled that of Virginia.
Futile attempts to make towns by legislation.
The lack of urban life was deplored by the legislators at Jamestown and Williamsburg, and assiduous efforts were made to correct the evil; but neither bounties nor orders to build were of avail. To make towns on paper was as easy as to make a promissory note, but nobody would go and settle in the towns. Most of the county seats consisted simply of the court-house, flanked by the jail, the dismal country inn, and the nondescript country “store,” where the roving peddler sometimes replenished his pack on his route through the plantations. Among the legislative acts designed to encourage the building of towns, three were especially important. The act of 1662 ordered that thirty-two brick houses should be erected at Jamestown, and forbade the building or repairing of wooden houses there; all tobacco grown in the three counties of James City, Charles City, and Surry was to be sent to Jamestown and stored there for shipping, and the penalty for disobedience of this order was a fine of 1,000 lbs. of tobacco; every ship, moreover, ascending the river above Mulberry Island, must land its cargo at Jamestown and nowhere else, under penalty of forfeiting the cargo. Half of these fines was to be paid to the town, the other half to the informer.[184] The statute of 1680, commonly known as the Cohabitation Act, undertook in somewhat similar fashion to establish a town in every county; and the attempt was renewed on a larger scale in 1691.[185] But all these acts were either disregarded or suspended. When the Surry planter could effect an exchange at his own wharf, without incidental expense or risk, it was useless to command him to load his crop on shallops and send it to Jamestown, with a charge for freight, a chance of capsizing, and warehouse dues at the end of the journey. The skipper withal had no wish to be saddled with port dues, or to be hindered from stopping and trading wherever a customer hove in sight. So skipper and planter had their way, and towns refused to grow.[186] When Thomas Jefferson entered William and Mary College in 1760, a lad of seventeen years, he had never seen so many as a dozen houses grouped together.