Fishing The greatest single economic resource of New England outside of agriculture was the fisheries.This industry,started by hardy sailors from Europe,long before the landing of the Pilgrims,flourished under the indomi-table seamanship of the Puritans,who labored with the net and the harpoon in almost every quarter of the Atlantic."Look,"exclaimed Edmund Burke,in the House of Commons,"at the manner in which the people of New England have of late carried on the whale fishery.Whilst we follow them among the tumbling mountains of ice and behold them penetrating into the deepest frozen recesses of Hudson's Bay and Davis's Straits,while we are looking for them beneath the arctic circle,we hear that they have pierced into the opposite region of polar cold,that they are at the antipodes and engaged under the frozen serpent of the south....Nor is the equinoctial heat more discouraging to them than the ac-cumulated winter of both poles.We know that,whilst some of them draw the line and strike the harpoon on the coast of Africa,others run the longitude and pursue their gigantic game along the coast of Brazil.No sea but what is vexed by their fisheries.No climate that is not witness to their toils.Neither the perse-verance of Holland nor the activity of France nor the dexterous and firm sagac-ity of English enterprise ever carried this most perilous mode of hard industry to the extent to which it has been pushed by this recent people."
The influence of the business was widespread.A large and lucrative European trade was built upon it.The better quality of the fish caught for food was sold in the markets of Spain,Portugal,and Italy,or exchanged for salt,lemons,and raisins for the American market.The lower grades of fish were carried to the West Indies for slave consumption,and in part traded for sugar and molasses,which furnished the raw materials for the thriving rum industry of New England.These activities,in turn,stimulated shipbuilding,steadily enlarging the demand for fishing and merchant craft of every kind and thus keeping the shipwrights,caulkers,rope makers,and other artisans of the seaport towns rushed with work.They also increased trade with the mother country for,out of the cash collected in the fish markets of Europe and the West Indies,the colonists paid for English manufactures.So an ever-widening circle of American enterprise centered around this single industry,the nursery of seamanship and the maritime spirit.
Oceanic Commerce and American Merchants.-All through the eighteenth century,the commerce of the American colonies spread in every direction until it rivaled in the number of people employed,the capital engaged,and the prof-its gleaned,the commerce of European nations.A modern historian has said:"The enterprising merchants of New England developed a network of trade routes that covered well-nigh half the world."This commerce,destined to beof such significance in the conflict with the mother country,presented,broadly speaking,two aspects.
On the one side,it involved the export of raw materials and agricultural produce.The Southern colonies produced for shipping,tobacco,rice,tar,pitch,and pine;the Middle colonies,grain,flour,furs,lumber,and salt pork;New England,fish,flour,rum,furs,shoes,and small articles of manufacture.The variety of products was in fact astounding.A sarcastic writer,while sneering at the idea of an American union,once remarked of colonial trade:"What sort of dish will you make?New England will throw in fish and onions.The middle states,flax-seed and flour.Maryland and Virginia will add tobacco.North Carolina,pitch,tar,and turpentine.South Carolina,rice and indigo,and Georgia will sprinkle the whole composition with sawdust.Such an absurd jumble will you make if you attempt to form a union among such discordant materials as the thirteen British provinces."
On the other side,American commerce involved the import trade,consisting principally of English and continental manufactures,tea,and "India goods."Sugar and molasses,brought from the West Indies,supplied the flourishing distilleries of Massachusetts,Rhode Island,and Connecticut.The carriage of slaves from Africa to the Southern colonies engaged hundreds of New England's sailors and thousands of pounds of her capital.
The disposition of imported goods in the colonies,though in part controlled by English factors located in America,employed also a large and important body of American merchantslike the Willings and Morrises of Philadelphia;the Amorys,Hancocks,and Faneuils of Boston;and the Livingstons and Lows of New York.In their zeal and enterprise,they were worthy rivals of their English competitors,so celebrated for world-wide commercialoperations.Though fully awareBoston in 1795 of the advantages they enjoyed in British markets and under the protection of the British navy,the American merchants were high-spirited and mettlesome,ready to contend with royal officers in order to shield American interests against outside interference.