and
harness for his horses. He was carpenter, blacksmith, cobbler, and often
boat-builder and fisherman as well. His wife made soap and candles, spun
yarn and dyed it, wove cloth and made the clothes the family wore, to
mention only a few of the tasks of the women of the eighteenth century.

The organization of industry, however, was beginning. Here and there
were small paper mills, glass factories-though many houses in the back
country were without glass windows--potteries, and iron foundries and
forges. Capitalists, in some places, had brought together a few
handloom weavers to make cloth for sale, and the famous shoemakers of
Massachusetts commonly worked in groups.

The mineral resources of the United States were practically unknown. The
country seems to have produced iron enough for its simple needs, some
coal, copper, lead, gold, silver, and sulphur. But we may say that
mining was hardly practiced at all.

The fisheries and the shipyards were great sources of wealth, especially
for New England. The cod fishers numbered several hundred vessels and
the whalers about forty. Thousands of citizens living along the seashore
and the rivers fished more or less to add to the local food supply. The
deep-sea fishermen exported a part of their catch, dried and salted.
Yankee vessels sailed to all ports of the world and carried the greater
part of the foreign commerce of the United States. Flour, tobacco, rice,
wheat, corn, dried fish, potash, indigo, and staves were the principal
exports. Great Britain was the best customer, with the French West
Indies next, and then the British West Indies. The principal imports
came from the same countries. Imports and exports practically balanced
each other, at about twenty million dollars annually, or about five
dollars a head. The great merchants owned ships and many of them, such
as John Hancock of Boston, and Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, had grown
very rich.

Inland transportation depended on horses and oxen or boats. There were
few good roads, sometimes none at all save bridle paths and trails.
The settlers along the river valleys used boats almost entirely.
Stage-coaches made the journey from New York to Boston in four days in
summer and in six in winter. Two days were required to go between New
York and Philadelphia. Forty to fifty miles a day was the speed of the
best coaches, provided always that they did not tumble into the ditch.
In many parts of the country one must need