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Articles produced on the farm used for exchange were fa- miliarly known as "country pay," and even Governor Dudley discharged his indebtedness to the college in this form of payment. The practice of using country pay extended well through the seventeenth century and in places during the eigh-
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teenth. Tax bills were discounted when paid in specie, and as late as 1684 the Court ordered that the town of Cambridge be allowed £10 in country pay for maintaining a bridge.
About the middle of the century (1651), owing to a greater inflow of foreign currency, particularly from the Dutch West Indies, and Spanish settlements, the establishment of a colo- nial mint was authorized, though coinage was an act of sover- eignty not conferred to the colonies. John Hull was given the right to mint silver coins from bullion plate, a Spanish coin. Three coins were authorized: shilling, sixpence and three- penny pieces. In the hope of preventing exportation, the coins contained only three-fourths as much silver as English coins of the same denomination; and they were given full legal tender power. On one side of the coin a tree was stamped which later gave rise to the term pine-tree shilling. Hull, as compensation for operating the mint, received one shilling in every twenty, a commission which gave him an ample fortune.
The coin, however, did not stay in the country; and within two years, the Court forbade the exportation of more than 20 shillings by any one person. Even this prohibition did not check the course of trade. Although the coinage continued for thirty years, there was always a scarcity of metallic money ; and the foreign coins which did circulate were likely to be over-alloyed or below weight. No satisfactory solution of this difficulty in the circulating medium was reached. In 1690 the colony turned to paper issues of promissory notes, and entered upon a policy which drove out all metallic currency. This experience will be described in a subsequent chapter.
PUBLIC REVENUE
The system of taxation was simple. It was inevitable that real estate, land and houses, should bear the principal part of the burden, but both the Plymouth and the Massachusetts Bay colonists early supplemented the property taxes with an income tax, according to "faculties and personal abilities." In the earlier years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, a lump assess- ment was ordered by the General Court, arbitrarily appor- tioned between the different towns according to their estimated wealth. For example, in 1633, £400 was levied, of which £48 was imposed upon Boston, and an equal sum upon Roxbury,
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New-Town, Watertown, and Charlestown. Dorchester, at that date the most well-to-do settlement, paid £80; Saugus (Lynn) £36; and Salem £38. In 1640, a total assessment of £1200 was raised; Boston then paid the largest amount, £179; followed by Ipswich, £120; and Salem, £115.
In 1646, the colony assessment was made more uniform. For every 20 shillings value of estate, including land and goods, a tax of one penny was imposed. In order to avoid disputes as to assessment and to secure greater exactness and uniformity, the valuation of cattle and horses was fixed at stated amounts, varying according to the age of the animals. A poll tax of 20 pence was paid by every male sixteen years of age or over ; laborers and craftsmen who earned more than 18 pence a day paid, in addition to the poll tax, 3 shillings and 4 pence; tradesmen, as butchers, bakers, and victuallers, were rated proportionable "to the produce of estates of other men," and paid according to their "returns and incomings."
The poor and infirm were exempt from taxes, and fre- quently partial exemptions were made in favor of public officials of the colony, and also to those who rendered some common service, as in building a sawmill or gristmill. Entire towns were granted generous abatements after the Indian war of 1675. The town of Springfield, which suffered great loss, received an abatement of £150, with the promise, however, that those who "deserted the town" and did not "run the hazard with their neighbors" be not allowed any share in the abatement.
The total yield of all these taxes constituted a rate, like the tenth or fifteenth in England; and as a rule a single rate was levied each year. In times of emergency, however, the rate was increased by a fourth, half, or doubled; and later, during the years of King Philip's war, multiplied several fold.
Owing to the lack of a sufficient monetary medium, rates were frequently paid in country produce, known as a country rate. For example, in 1675, seven country rates were levied ; and the prices of produce accepted were fixed as follows per bushel : "wheat 6 sh., rye 4 sh. 6 d., barley and peas, 4 sh., Indian corn, 3 sh. 6 d., oats 2 sh. 6 d." A discount of 25 per cent was allowed if the tax was paid in money. There was naturally much loss to the public treasury, in the collection and
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IMPORT DUTIES
shipment of the produce ; and it was necessary to provide pub- lic warehouses to care for this form of revenue. The his- torian of the town of Woburn writes that the first inhabitants of that town were accustomed to pay only a certain part of their taxes in money, the rest in cattle, grain or other fruits of the soil, or articles of home manufacture, as shoes. Only a quarter part of the annual salary raised by taxes, of their first and second ministers was paid in coin, the remainder being made up of corn or articles of family consumption. Cattle and horses were sometimes included in country pay; but if so it was ordered that no "lean cattle or horses" be accepted.
In the earlier years of the colony a considerable amount of revenue-significant at least when compared with the slender sum collected by taxes-was obtained from fines. These were imposed with the greatest freedom by the General Court, not only as penalties for minor misdemeanors, but also for negli- gence of duties. Fines were imposed for abusing servants by their masters, for buying land of Indians without leave of the government, for taking too much toll, extortion, for threatening marshalls, for selling strong waters and drunk- enness.
No partiality was shown; magistrates as well as humble citizens paid the penalty for transgression. Deputies of the General Court who on other occasions were honored with high responsibilities, were fined for being absent at "nine of the clock," and one was fined in 1636, three days in succession. Towns were fined for defective highways, bridges, and fences ; as well as for not providing watchhouses, pounds, and stocks for the punishment of offenders.
IMPORT DUTIES
Import duties played a minor part in the revenue system, and the duties which were imposed were designed to restrict expenditure for luxuries rather than to provide revenues. The colonists faced the possible displeasure of the mother country, if they attempted too boldly to restrict trade ; particularly was this true after the passage of the Navigation Acts, from 1651 on as will be shown in the last two chapters of this volume.
In 1636 in order to prevent "the inordinate expense of pro-
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visions brought from beyond the seas," it was ordered that an importer of fruit, spice, sugar, wine, strong water, or to- bacco should pay a duty of one-sixth of the value, and that a retailer of such commodities should pay one-third the value. Such drastic regulation, however, did not last long; and within a year the duties on sugar, spice, and fruit were repealed; and in another year the import on wine and strong water was dis- carded.
A few years later (1645) wines were again singled out for duties and for a time collection of this tax was farmed out for a stated sum. In 1649, owing to disputes with the neighboring colonies of Plymouth, New Haven, and Connecticut, export and import duties were levied on certain staple commodities traded with those colonies. These, however, did not continue long, for the dispute was quickly adjusted. Nevertheless, jealous watchfulness against the encroachments of traders from the neighboring colonies did not cease, for in 1680 im- posts were placed upon the importation of cattle from other plantations; and protective duties were levied to prevent the "filling up our market and incapacitating our inhabitants to sell what they breed and raise."
About the same time a small colonial impost of a penny per pound on goods imported was levied. This aroused criti- cism in England, but was defended on the ground that it was simply a tax on property, similar in its effect to the tax on other domestic property and was not designed to restrict trade. At one time there was an impost of 5 sh. per hogshead on all molasses and 60 sh. per hogshead on all rum imported into Massachusetts by foreigners. This obviously would be in keeping with the policy of the English government to mo- nopolize trade for her own shipping, the proceeds being espe- cially devoted to harbor fortifications at the port of Boston.
PUBLIC EXPENDITURES
The expenditures of the colonial government were largely devoted to military protection. Fear of the Indians was con- stantly before them and there was the possibility of conflict with France. Although each inhabitant was enjoined to pro- vide himself with a musket and powder, it was necessary to supplement this by governmental aid. Liberal allowances were
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continually made for the maintenance of the Castle Island Fort in Boston harbor.
The salaries of the governor and higher officials absorbed no small portion of the tax levy. For example, at the middle of the century the governor of Massachusetts Bay received £120; the clerk of the deputies £16; the secretary of the col- ony £45; each of the magistrates £35; and the prison keeper £20. The deputies were paid a small sum per diem; at first the towns attempted to throw the cost upon the colony, but this was resisted, and the salary became a local charge. The treasurer was generally paid a certain percentage of receipts.
In the Plymouth colony, the salaries of the magistrates were, during the early years, less. The "old" magistrates received £20 and their "table" expenses; the newly elected, only the latter. In 1667 all were paid £50 per annum.
WEALTH AND PROSPERITY
Judged by all economic tests, Massachusetts colony by the close of the seventeenth century was prosperous. Natural conditions coupled with ideals of self-government, prevented any wide differences in the possession of wealth, except on a minor scale. The conquest of the soil, in which most of the settlers were engaged, was an arduous task, and the scanty returns did not justify the use of many hired laborers. Some comfortable fortunes were gained by the advance in large bodies of land. Otherwise only by trade and commerce could a large fortune be accumulated.
There was a small servile population. Both Indian and Negro, besides white servants were bound out to a master for a term of years and received no wages. Of these there were a few in the Pilgrim group of 1620; and in Winthrop's company of 1630 they numbered about 180. In the early struggle for maintaining existence, many of these quickly ob- tained an independent position in the social organization. Later Edward Randolph, reporting upon the condition of the colony, wrote that there were no hired servants in Boston but upon paid wages, except a few who served four years in return for the cost of transportation.
Slavery, except as a punishment for crime, was frowned upon. In 1646, the Court ordered that a negro interpreter who had been unlawfully taken in Guinea should be sent back
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at the expense of the colony. There were, however, when Randolph made his report in 1681, about 200 slaves in the colony-a number far too small to make a distinct social class.
As far as can be determined from the inventories of estates after death, the property valuation of a considerable number of the farmers ranged from £100 to £1000. The following summary of an estate is typical of the economic status of a pioneer farmer in the Connecticut valley in 1690. This set- tler was a leader in the opening up of new plantations, and besides farming had a sawmill and a cornmill.
The total value of his property was £793. Of this two houses and the homestead were valued at nearly one-third of the total, £250; other lands at £213; the two mills, £90; cat- tle, horses, sheep, and swine £89; arms and ammunition £11; trooping furniture, including pillion and bridle, £9; wearing apparel £8; ten pairs of sheets £10; and beds £11. The re- maining £100 included farming tools, cooking utensils, linen, crockery, furniture, spinning wheel and reels, Bibles and other books, and part of a barrel of rum. The usual inventory showed a smaller estate; but as a whole these recorded many evidences of success and economic independence.
In Boston, there were larger fortunes; about thirty mer- chants were rated as worth from ten to twenty thousand pounds. Hezekiah Usher, the first bookseller and publisher in the col- ony who died in 1676, left an estate of £16,000, and John Usher, his son, was reported as "very rich," worth £20,000. The observer of the growing prosperity of Boston at that period noted that the merchant, Robert Gibbs, built a house at a cost of nearly £3,000.
Proof of the growing welfare of the colony was seen in the efforts of the English government to exercise greater super- vision over its affairs. The colony was no longer simply a refuge for discontents who might make trouble if forced to remain in England; it was increasing in wealth. This stim- ulated the home government to take measures towards gaining a greater share for itself in this prosperity, by regulating the trade of Massachusetts, by collecting small duties in imports, and especially by bringing the whole colonial system into accord with the general policy embodied in the Navigation Acts.
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
[See also the bibliographies following Chapters ii (Geography) ; iv (Plymouth) ; vi (Indian) ; viii (Sister Settlements) ; xvi (Trade and Ship- ping) ; xx (Crises) ; and the General Bibliography at the end of Vol- ume V.]
BIDWELL, Percy W. and FALCONER, John I .- History of Agriculture in the Northern United States, 1620-1860 (Washington, Carnegie In- stitution, 1925) .- A thoroughly scholarly work, carefully annotated and based upon documentary material and special monographs.
CLARK, Victor S .- History of Manufactures in the United States, 1607- 1860 (Washington, Carnegie Institution, 1916) .- Careful and pains- taking research with references to original source material.
DAVIS, Andrew McFarland .- Currency and Banking in the Province of Massachusetts Bay (American Economic Association, Publications, third series, Vol. I, No. 4, 1900) .- Chapter ii of this exhaustive mono- graph deals with the early coinage and the valuation of foreign coins. DOUGLAS, C. H. J .- The Financial History of Massachusetts (New York, 1892) .- A monographic study based upon original records. First part deals with the colonial history.
DOYLE, J. A .- The English in America (London, 1887) .- Vol. II, Chap. 1, pp. 1-125. Written from the English standpoint.
EGLESTON, Melville .- The Land System of the New England Colonies (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins Univ., 1886) .- Especially pp. 545-600.
FELT, J. B .- Statistics of Taxation in Massachusetts, including Valua- tion and Population in Collections of the American Statistical Asso- ciation (Boston, 1847) .- Vol. I, Part 3. Contains detailed data com- piled from original records.
PALFREY, John G .- History of New England (Boston, 1865) .- Especi- ally Vol. I, II .- A detailed history, covering all branches of con- temporary history, with scattered chapters dealing with social and economic characteristics of the period.
RECORDS OF NEW PLYMOUTH COLONY (12 vols., Boston, 1855- 1861) .- Covers the period 1620-1692. An original, basic authority.
RECORDS OF THE GOVERNOR AND COMPANY OF THE MASS- ACHUSETTS BAY IN NEW ENGLAND, 1628-1641. [Edited by Shurtleff, Nathaniel] .- (5 vols., Boston, 1853) .- Covers the period 1628-1686. Of first importance in illustrating public opinion as ex- pressed in laws.
WEEDEN, W. B .- Economic and Social History of New England, 1620- 1789 (2 vols., Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1891) .- A wealth of data col- lected from a wide range of sources, but not conveniently arranged in topics. See Vol. I, Chaps. iii, v, vi, vii.
WINSOR, Justin .- Narrative and Critical History of America (8 vols., Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1855-1889) .- Vol. III, Chap. ix, on the New England Colonies, by Charles Deane. See especially pp. 310-321, and for bibliographical material pp. 342-363.
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CHAPTER XVI
TRADE AND SHIPPING (1630-1689)
BY HALFORD LANCASTER HOSKINS
Dickson Professor of English and American History Tufts College
THE COMMERCIAL URGE IN MASSACHUSETTS (1630-1689)
All of the circumstances under which the Massachusetts Bay colony was founded augured a future success in com- merce. The first charter for the colony was obtained by those who belonged to England's mercantile classes; and the orig- inal settlers were careful to attract to the colony as immigrants only those of their own kind. This was undoubtedly an im- portant matter in the founding of the colony; for aside from the difficulty of supplementing the food supplied by the sea with the products of a rocky and sterile soil, the newcomers to New England had relatively little difficulty in becoming adapted to their new environment. Their propensity for a seafaring life was anticipated even in the first charter, which provided that "this shall not be taken to abridge, barr, or hinder any of our loving subjects whatsoever to use and exercise the trade of fishing upon that coast of New England in America by their presents mentioned to be graunted . " The entire subsequent history of the Mas- sachusetts Bay region gives testimony to the seafaring industry and commercial acumen of those who were influenced by mat- ters of conscience to leave the mother country, but who selected their future place of abode more with an eye to its marine resources than to the character of climate and soil. Nature herself was prepared for commerce. The land as it stood
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COMMERCIAL URGE IN MASSACHUSETTS 443
offered little more than the sinews of a merchant marine. Trees were plenty, supplying ship timbers and masts, and pitch and tar for caulking. Aside from the animal and plant re- sources of the forest, the land was decidedly inhospitable, as were most of the aboriginal inhabitants. Long winters and deep snows discouraged any purely agricultural community. Corresponding to the difficulties in a colonial economy which faced inland, were equally great opportunities toward the sea. There nature was lavish in her gifts. Shores that were "stern and rockbound" opened into numerous landlocked harbors hardly to be equalled in the world. Most of the rivers failed to provide good highways into the interior; but they teemed with fish, their tidal flats produced inexhaustible quantities of shellfish, and they provided ideal basins for the building and launching of vessels of all sorts, with building materials ready at hand.
The sea itself was the embodiment of opportunity. The cold streams of the Labrador current, while bringing fog and rain, bred in the shoal waters off the coast illimitable quan- tities of fish of every marketable variety-herring, mackerel, halibut, haddock, sturgeon, and the sacred cod. Great whales were numerous. So vast were the schools of fish that sea captains from the time of John Cabot onward not infrequently reported that their vessels made headway with difficulty through the dense masses. Considering that dried and salted fish was a staple article of diet on both sides of the Atlantic, the environment of the sea laid hold of the people from the first. Early Massachusetts produced no mines of the precious metals such as those of Mexico and Peru; but in the furs of the forest and the fish of the sea were found comparable and. abundant sources of wealth, the exploitation of which required no toil of parasitic slaves.
Even before the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony was drafted, fishing communities were scattered along the coast north of Cape Cod. Of these early settlements we know little ; but their fish products were undoubtedly known in Eng- land as were those of their Newfoundland contemporaries. The charter took particular pains to specify that "they (the Company) shall have full and free power and liberty to con- tinue and use their said trade of fishing upon the said coast
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in any the seas thereunto adjoyning, or any armes of the seas or saltwater rivers, where they have byn wont to fishe, and to build and sett up upon the landes by theis presents such wharfes, stages and worke-houses as shalbe necessarie for the salting, drying, keeping and packing up of their fish
and to cut downe and take such trees and other ma- terialls [as] shalbe needfull for that purpose, and for all other necessarie easements, helpes, and advantage con- cerning their said trade of fishing there, in such manner and forme as they have byn heretofore at any time accustomed to doe " The earliest industry to develop after the foun- dation of the colony was shipbuilding in conjunction with the fishing trade. In the North Atlantic, the continents of Amer- ica and Europe approach each other, to an extent which made possible fairly regular and profitable commercial contacts be- tween them. A month's voyage would usually suffice to bring the produce of the northern parts of the New World to the marts of the old. It required articles of great value for their bulk and weight to support the East Indian trade, in which long voyages of nine or twelve months were required in the seventeenth century. The relatively short time-distance from Massachusetts Bay to the British Isles, northern Europe, the Peninsula, or the West Indies made possible a profitable ex- change of cheaper, bulkier commodities; hence an economic basis for the survival and growth of the New England set- tlements.
THE BEGINNINGS OF TRADE (1630-1650)
The Massachusetts colony was established not far from the sources of furs. Furs did become one of the articles of ex- port from Massachusetts towns at an early date, and continued as a profitable article of trade throughout the seventeenth cen- tury. Nevertheless, the colony was in possession of a consid- erable part of this trade, although from the beginning most of the natural channels leading into the fur country were in other hands. The Dutch for a time controlled the Connecticut River valley trade. The Hudson was closed to Massachusetts traders. The Kennebec was preempted by Plymouth. John Mason and his associates controlled the lower part of the Pis- cataqua. Hence the supply of pelts coming out to Massachu- setts was never very large or dependable.
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The fishing trade, on the other hand, caught hold from the beginning. Disputes over fishing rights in the waters of Massachusetts Bay were abundant from the chartering of the original London and Plymouth Companies. Early litigation elicited an important order from the Privy Council in 1620 based on the theory that waters adjacent to the coasts of a chartered corporation came under the jurisdiction of such a company. This order, amended and reissued by James I in 1623, furnished ground for a petition from the Massachusetts Bay colony in September, 1630, almost at the beginning of its history, "for the preventing of disorderly trade, of fisher- men and other interlopers."
The first fishing ventures from the towns of Massachusetts were made as much with the object of obtaining a supply of food for the colonists as with a view to export trade. How- ever, some fish appear to have been sent to England from the first year of the colony's life. The original group of settlers transported to Salem, with Endecott at their head, were re- quested to send back to England in the vessels bringing out supplies, cargoes of "staves, sarsaparilla, sumach, two or three hundred firkins of sturgeon and other fish .", a request which seems to have been honored.
For some years after the founding of Massachusetts towns, the trade to Europe in dried and salted fish relied on the sailing of such English and other European ships as came to colonial ports at rather infrequent intervals. In these early days, de- veloped a three-cornered traffic. Vessels loaded with fish and perhaps small quantities of furs cleared frequently for south- ern France or the ports of the Iberian peninsula. There they sold or exchanged their colonial wares for wines and olive oil, which were carried to England. From England the ves- sels returned across the North Atlantic, bearing, along with some numbers of emigrants as passengers, such a variety of goods as early life in Massachusetts demanded. This included staple foods, such as oatmeal and peas, butter and cheese, vine- gar, wines and spirits ; wearing apparel, such as shoes, kerseys, and woolens ; and miscellaneous other articles, including guns, powder and shot, candles, soap, nails, knives, and tools and utensils of all kinds. Until the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury, the balance at least of legitimate foreign trade, was in
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