Dried fish was the chief commodity carried out of New England, and was exported in American bottoms to Spain, Portugal, and the West Indies. Fish-oil and timber were also sent out of Maine and Massachusetts to foreign countries; hay, grain, and cattle were taken to New York, Philadelphia, and the West Indies. There was an active longshore coasting service by small craft, which ascended the rivers and gathered produce from the farmers; these they took to neighboring ports, and brought back other colonial products in exchange. Larger vessels went with miscellaneous cargoes to the West Indies, and returned with slaves and sugar. New Englanders manufactured rum from West India sugar and molasses, and exported the finished product. There are instances of New England ships taking rum to Africa, where it was exchanged for slaves; these slaves were then transported to the West Indies, to be bartered for sugar and molasses, which was carried home and converted into rum. It was a day when kegs of rum and wines were given to ministers at donation parties, and ministers themselves made brandy by the barrel for domestic use, and sold it to their parishioners. Wines were imported from Madeira and Malaga, and manufactured goods from England and the Continent. A very large and profitable business was done in the general carrying trade, which was developed by enterprising New England men in all the sister colonies. Boston alone employed, by the middle of the eighteenth century, about six hundred vessels in her foreign commerce, and a thousand in her fisheries and coast-trade.
Distribution of occupations.
At the beginning of the eighteenth century the population was in about equal degree engaged in trade and agriculture. Trade was the chief calling in Rhode Island, and agriculture in Connecticut and New Hampshire, while in Maine and Massachusetts both flourished. All of the colonies were also much interested in the fisheries.
78. Social Conditions.
The towns.
Boston, Newport, and New Haven were the chief towns; the former was at this time the centre of political and mercantile life on the North American continent, and there were external evidences of considerable wealth and some luxury. New Haven was famed for its prosperous appearance, and the houses of its rich men were of a better style of architecture than commonly seen in the colonies. Small villages, neighborhood centres of the several townships, abounded everywhere. The houses of the minister and the school-teacher, with the little shops of tradesmen and artisans, formed the nucleus around which the farm-houses were grouped with more or less density. The village streets, overhung with arching elms, were kept in tolerable order by the "hog-reeves," "fence-viewers," and other town officials. The quaint, roomy, gambrel-roofed houses were scrupulously plain and clean, and were presided over by model housewives.
Life and manners.
The people in these rural communities were in moderate financial circumstances, neat in habit, intelligent, and fairly educated; both sexes, young and old, worked hard, were frugal, thrifty, and as a rule rigid in morals. While coldly reserved towards strangers, they were kind and hospitable, and noted far and wide for their acute inquisitiveness. They wore sober-colored garments except on Sunday, the important day of the week, when there was a general display of quaint finery of a sombre character. The men wore long stockings and knee-breeches, with buckled shoes; workmen had breeches and jackets of leather, buckskin, or coarse canvas, while those of higher degree were generally dressed in coarse homespun,—only the richest could afford imported cloths. Their great open fireplaces were ill-adapted to withstand the winter's rigor. Their churches were wholly unprovided with heating accommodations. Their diet was spare. The well-to-do prided themselves on their old silver tableware, and New England kitchens were noted for their displays of brightly burnished pewter and brasses. Cider and New England rum were favorite beverages; but drunkenness was less prevalent than in the other colonies: the New England temperament was not inclined to excesses and roistering. The general tone of life was sedate, even gloomy; the Puritans had "a lurking inherited distrust for enjoyment," yet they cultivated a certain dry humor, and for the young people there was not lacking a round of simple amusements, such as house-raisings, dancing parties, and husking, spinning, quilting, and apple-paring bees, into which the neighborhoods entered with great zest. In the towns there was more pretension and ceremonial; but taking changed conditions into account, the life of the townspeople and their habits of thought differed but little from those of their rural cousins.
Roads and travel.
The highways were generally of fair character, but the larger streams were unbridged. Outside of the neighborhoods of the large towns wheeled vehicles, except for heavy loads, were not common until the time of the Revolution. Horseback was the ordinary mode of travel. A tavern kept by some leading citizen could be found in every town, with good lodgings at reasonable rates, although there was general complaint of the cookery. Nowhere else in the colonies was there so much intercommunication as in New England.