colonies - settlers bring
technology, knowledge from home countries;
New World - different geography,
geology;
Need new skills.
1750 about 90% of
colonial population at least part-time farmers.
access to new crops, corn
rapid population growth
- about doubled every 25 years.
plow. Seeding. Weeding.
Harvesting, threshing,
adaptations – axe,
fencing;
wood – vital
resource; building, fuel, chemical manufacture, tools, transport.
East Coast
deforestation;
Shipbuilding -
shipwrights, carpenters, blacksmiths, instrument makers, painters, ropemakers
and sailmakers;
sawmills, run by
waterpower.
Millwrights’
knowledge –skills of carpenter, mason, stonecutter, blacksmith,
wheelwright and surveyor.
by 1820s, one
water-driven mill for every 142 New Yorkers.
15 horsepower.
Lack of resources -
short on people;
apprentices,
small crafts - blacksmith,
carpenters, glass blower, barrel making, stonemason, tanner.
- NY and Philly under
100,000 people – London past one million.
David Rittenhouse clockmaker,
scientific instrument maker; orreries 1760s.
Transport – 1750s,
six 18-hour days from New York to Boston.
1790s turnpikes, 1808
National Road (doesn’t reach St. Louis until 1850)
Conestoga wagons.
transport costs 29% of
selling price of flour from wheat grown in Shenandoah Valley & sold in
Alexandria, VA 80 miles distant.
philosophy of
mercantilism
1675 50 sawmills in
Massachusetts alone;
Furs. Fish.
mid-1700s, more
ironmaking establishments in American colonies than in Britain itself.
Blast furnace
"pig iron"
wrought iron
Pennsylvania;
1700 colonies 1,500 tons
of iron; 1775, 30,000 tons.
1750, Parliament Iron Act - removed all duty taxes on bar
iron & pig iron brought from colonies into England; second, prohibited colonists
from building any new mills to produce finished metal products.
"A colonist cannot
make a button or horseshoe without some sooty ironmonger in Britain bawling
& squawling that he's being robbed."
1764 fifty Boston
merchants agreed to stop wearing fancy imported lace; mechanics pledged to wear
only aprons made in Mass.
"make American and
buy American" movements
1772, Philly china
factory, glass factory & paper factory.
- Continental Congress resolutions
encouraging build-up of domestic industry;
encouragement for making
firearms, saltpeter & sulphur,
Pennsylvania rifle;
one shipment alone,
French sent 21,000 muskets & over 100,000 pounds of gunpowder.