ternative was given of the ownership of eight miles on one
side of a river and as far into the interior "as the situation of the
occupiers will permit." The title was vested in the patroon forever, and
he was presented with a monopoly of the resources of his domain except
furs and pelts. No patroon or other colonist was allowed to make woolen,
linen, cotton or cloth of any material under pain of banishment.[1]

These restrictions were in the interest of the Dutch West India Company,
a commercial corporation which had well-nigh dictatorial powers. A
complete monopoly throughout the whole of its subject territory, it was
armed with sweeping powers, a formidable equipment, and had a great
prestige. It was somewhat of a cross between legalized piracy and a body
of adroit colonization promoters. Pillage and butchery were often its
auxiliaries, although in these respects it in nowise equalled its twin
corporation, the Dutch East India Company, whose exploitation of
Holland's Asiatic possessions was a long record of horrors.

THE DUTCH WEST INDIA COMPANY.

The policy of the Dutch West India Company was to offer generous prizes
for peopling the land while simultaneously forbidding competition with
any of the numerous products or commodities dealt in by itself. This had
much to do with determining the basic character of the conspicuous
fortunes of a century and two centuries later. It followed that when
native industries were forbidden or their output monopolized not only by
the Dutch West India Company in New Netherlands, but by other companies
elsewhere in the colonies, that ownership of land became the mainstay of
large private fortunes with agriculture as an accompanying factor.
Subsequently the effects of this continuous policy were more fully seen
when England by law after law paralyzed or closed up many forms of
colonial manufacture. The feudal character of Dutch colonization, as
carried on by the Dutch West India Company, necessarily created great
landed estates, the value of which arose not so much from agriculture,
as was the case in Virginia, Maryland and later the Carolinas and
Georgia, but from the natural resources of the land. The superb
primitive timber brought colossal profits in export, and there were
also very valuable fishery rights where an estate bounded a shore or
river. The pristine rivers were filled with great shoals of fish, to
which the river fishing of the present day cannot be compared. As
settl