USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Metropolitan Boston; a modern history; Volume II > Part 40
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English Attempts at the Repression of Commerce-As early as 1660, England was beginning to put the screws on commerce. Orders were laid that exportations to America must be carried in English vessels ; exportations from America were to be sent only to England ; or if colonies traded with each other, a duty must be added to the value of the articles exchanged. Boston merchants simply ignored these requirements and turned to Southern Europe and the West Indies, and eventually to all the ports of the globe. The whole long list of restraints of free exchange of products between all countries are matters of history, the "Boston Tea Party" being one of the final gestures, an impatient rejection of the right of any Nation to say what the town must do. The Revolution, from one standpoint, was caused by a persistent interference by the shop-keepers of England with the shop-keepers of this country.
Smuggling Becomes an Institution-The continued interference with the mercantile affairs of merchants on this side of the water led to an interesting condition, whereby many of them became open smugglers, if smuggling can be said ever to be "open." From a modern standpoint, much of the wealth of the merchant families of Boston came from sources which would not now bear the closest inspection. But due allowance must be made for the times, the need, and the attitude of men of that day. As indicated, trading could not be carried on with other countries than England; it was forbidden by law. Either resort had to be made to smuggling, or the people could not send what they produced where it would bring the most, and what was wanted at home, could not be had, even though the citizens were able to pay for it. Smuggling became an institution, one perfectly honorable and just. It is said that in the last years of the seventeenth century, one-third of the trade in Boston was in direct violation of the law, but that some of the English merchants connived in the smuggling with as great an avidity as the colonials. Cer- tainly the government authorities must have deliberately been blind to infractions of shipping laws, or their fractures could not have been so long continued. D. A. Wells, the historian, makes the statement that "the colonists were a nation of law breakers. Nine-tenths of the colonial merchants were smugglers. One-quarter of the whole number of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were bred in the contraband trade. John Hancock was the prince of contraband traders, and, with
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John Adams as his counsel, was on trial in the Admiralty Court in Bos- ton at the exact hour of the shedding of blood at Lexington, to answer for one-half a million dollars penalties alleged to have been incurred by him as a smuggler."
The Merchant Princes of the Eighteenth Century-The life of the pioneer merchant, to paraphrase Gilbert's verse, "was not a happy one." He must often build and sail his own ships, take the most round- about voyages for trade, smuggle his cargo out of English ports and into his own. The hand of the State was always against him, pirates lay in wait to seize his vessels, and the balance of trade was so consistently in favor of Great Britain, as to keep the colonies stripped of currency- paper promises and good faith had to be the basis of commercial trans- actions. It is not surprising that few rose to high estate as merchants in so speculative a business, one cumbered by so many risks. The wealthy trader of today might well be the poverty stricken debtor or felon of tomorrow. But win out, some did. Boston came to have many merchant princes, men of wealth and power whose homes became more and more expansive and furnished luxuriously. The stately square man- sions with their spacious gardens of the pre-Revolutionary period had long since disappeared from Boston, but one may see their like along Brattle Street in Cambridge (Tory Row) or scatteringly, throughout the metropolitan district. Or one can visit the Museum of Fine Arts and see among its collections the furniture and plate imported by the older tradesmen on some prosperous voyage; and Copley has saved for us some glimpses of the gorgeous apparel with which their wives were decked. The royal governors were merchants; those associated with them engaged in trade. Sir Harry Frankland was an officer of the cus- toms, and profited thereby, and it was commerce which brought distinc- tion to the Hutchinson family. Winsor, in his "Memorial History," has given the autographs of more than forty Boston merchants of the middle of the eighteenth century, and it is remarkable how many of the names are still well known in Eastern Massachusetts. Some of these auto- graphs are hard to decipher, but as nearly as may be, Winsor's list is as follows: Benjamin Greene, James Derkins, Charles Tilden, John Gooch, Joseph Quincy, Thomas Gunter, Ralph Inman, John Dennie, John Rowe, Benjamin Austin, Samuel Hewes, Thomas Hancock, George Holmes, Job Lewis, Thomas Hill, John Steel, Samuel Welles, Peter Cherdon, Joseph Russel, John and Jacob Wendell, John Avery, Thomas Greene, Thomas Oxnard, Joseph Lee, Edward Winslow, John Jones, John Boyl- ston, Benjamin Faneuil, James Bowdoin, James Boutineau, William Bowdoin, John Spooner, Aeneas Markay, Jonathan Binney, Samuel Stir- gis, Nicholas Boylston, Isaac Freeman, Henry Quincy.
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Post-Revolution Merchandizing-The Revolution, although only the first great military event of the war, the Siege of Boston, occurred in the town, utterly wrecked its prosperity and eliminated many of its mer- chants. Many of these went racing to Halifax in the hegira of the Tories when the siege was lifted. Foreign trade was paralyzed, and prior to the outbreak, non-importation agreement and other boycotts of English goods, brought ruin to many of the tradesmen. There is a touch of the sublime in the way the merchants of that day entered into agreements neither to import or to sell certain articles, agreements which meant the loss of their fortunes. During the actual beleaguerment of the town, commerce ceased entirely, and was but feebly resumed until after the end of the war. The treaty of Paris, in 1783, brought additional ruin to many of the merchants, for European ships rushed loads of merchandise to the States, soon flooding the markets. A number of the few remaining Boston tradesmen, in their anxiety to have a share in the pseudo-pros- perity which succeeded peace, over-reached in their ventures and went down in the crash. The overloading of this country with cheap goods was one of the severest blows which the new Nation had to survive. It destroyed many budding industries, ruined trade, and by the almost com- plete depletion of the solid money in the country, all but disrupted the loosely bound Union of States. Meanwhile, although the ships of all Nations had free access to our ports, our ships were barred from those of the English possessions everywhere, even in the West Indies. Whole- sale smuggling failed to avail, and the fortunes accumulated over years by many families were lost.
Upon the merchants of the Revolution fell the heaviest of the burdens of the war, for they were not only cut off from the ways of making money, but were the greatest of the contributors to the support of the conflict. It is but fitting that honor should be given to their memory, if only by the recording of their names. Again must we draw upon Win- sor, for he is the only one who has taken the trouble to make a roster of the merchants of that day. In Volume III, pages 152-153, of his "Memo- rial History of Boston," he prints the autographs of the Boston mer- chants of the Revolutionary period as: "John Amory, Timothy Fitch, Alex. Hill, Joshua Stenshaw, John Scott, John Ervingjur, Samuel Hughes, Thomas Amory, Edward Payne, Richard Salter, Daniel Malcolm, Rich- ard Cary, Samuel Eliot, Henry Lloyd, Joshua Winslow, Thomas Gray, J. Rowe, J. W. Green, Nicholas Boylston, John Hancock, Ebenezer Storer, Solomon Davy, John Barrett, Thomas Russell, Joseph Lee, W. Phillips, John Avery, William Fisher, Nathaniel Appleton, Jonathan Mason, Nathaniel Cary, William Bowes, William Coffin, Nathaniel Greene, J. Spooner, Joseph Sherburne, Isaac Winslow, Benjamin Hallowell, Jona- than Williams, Daniel Hubbard, Henderson Inches, Harrison Gray, Jr.
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The Peak of Foreign Commerce-The French Revolution was fol- lowed by difficulties between that country and Great Britain, leading to a blockade of France, and a ruling by the latter country against trading with England. The United States was left the only great neutral Nation having cargo carriers, and the Boston merchant-man came into its own. The town was making an extraordinary recovery when there came a break in the flow of wealth. The foreign countries became jealous of the maritime power of the United States. Beginning in 1803, they began to interfere in every way possible with its continued development. Eng- land was, of course, the principal in the obstructive acts which tended to restrain our maritime trade, but other countries also took a hand. Our merchant ships were neither safe nor the rights of the men who manned them protected. President Jefferson, thinking that the foreign Nations were dependent upon our shipping for their supplies, retaliated by plac- ing an embargo on our vessels engaged in foreign trade. But England and France proved to be able to get along very well without the aid of our ships, hundreds of which lay rotting at their wharves at this time. The War of 1812 gave a finishing touch to the foreign trade, and another setback to a return to commercial supremacy by Boston.
Peace was declared eventually and there was an immediate revival of trade. The period from 1820 to 1840 was the most prosperous one for Boston, and marked the rise of the clipper ship, the most notable contri- bution of New England to the merchantmen of the age of wooden ships. All the world was sought out by the Yankee vessels; the East Indian and the China trade called for faster craft. The demand was met by a new sort of ship, one characterized as "cod-headed and mackerel-tailed," which astonished the world by their speed. Great fortunes were amassed by Boston merchants engaged in shipping, wealth that was thereafter to be turned to the aid of manufacturing, railroads, and the development of the home country. Steam was introduced as a motive power, and metal came to be used in ship-building; these new vessels displaced the clip- per ship, and control of the shipping trade was lost. The Civil War marked the end of the maritime fleets of the United States; since 1865 the American commerce has had to rely on foreign bottoms.
The Modern Type of Merchant-Boston was still decidedly commer- cial in its interests, but the term "merchant" came to take on a broader meaning. The city became the counting-house for New England, financ- ing transportation, manufacturing and commerce. The wool trade, the textile markets, the shoe business and many others made their head- quarters in the Hub. Merchandising was more definitely divided into wholesale and retail. The merchant was thereafter one who sold either in large quantities or small, and the same term came to be applied
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to the "factor," the agent for a manufacturing concern or a commission salesman. He no longer came from the merchant marine, but from the country store. Instead of making voyages in a minor capacity as a train- ing for commerce, boys became clerks, selling over crossroads store counters, and with their wits sharpened by bargaining with the shrewd New England farmer, they moved to the city and faced the even sharper competition of the larger field. As one looks back over the commercial history of Boston, one is impressed by the deviousness of the paths which it has trod. It started as a combined wholesale and retail proposition, and after moving along very crooked lines, seems to have circled back to the same idea in the present.
There still persist in the Boston merchant many of the older char- acteristics. He is as canny as ever, cautious and slow to change his mind or methods, level headed, but just as ready as ever to take a chance or to seize a new opportunity. The World War was just as upsetting to busi- ness in Boston as it was to other places, but the best of our merchants neither lost their heads in the boom period of the war nor were they dis- mayed by the depression which followed. Caution has prevented catas- trophes, thrift and sanity have steadied the merchants, and one cannot but be impressed that the business men of Boston are just a bit more firmly established, just a bit more prosperous than those in the same lines in almost any city in the United States. As this is being written, the resources of Boston's business are being studied as never before, and such facts as are discovered, proclaimed fearlessly. It is the day of the small economies, and the merchant in Boston is practicing them. If any man can make two dividends grow where one grew before, it is he.
Boston's First Shopkeeper-John Cogan, or Coggan, was the first person to open a shop in Boston for the sale of merchandise, and he chose for the site of his store what was to be for many years the center of the mercantile and financial district of the town. This was the northeast corner of State and Washington streets, and it is of interest to note that Captain Robert Keayne, tailor and merchant, probably the richest man in the Boston of his day, occupied the opposite corner. State Street eventually became the banking street, and Washington the first shopping highway. The name of Captain Keayne is connected very intimately with Boston history in many ways. It will be recalled that he was the distinguished founder of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company which has an unbroken record extending over two hundred and ninety years. As a merchant he was not above taking large profits when he could, not being able, however, to escape a court fine and church disci- pline for making, in some cases, "above six-pence on the shilling profit" in the sale of foreign commodities. But there can be little doubt of his
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public-spiritedness for was it not his initial bequest of £300 that started the building of a Town House in 1656? And while we are gossiping, mention might be made of the list of contributors to the construction of the Town House, the original of which is in the possession of the Boston- ian Society. There were evidently an unusual number of merchants in the town at that time, a quarter century being sufficient for the commer- cial character of Boston to become manifest. A reproduction of one page of the list by the State Street Trust Company, shows twenty-two signa- tures. These included males and females, and the high officials of the Colony such as John Endicott, the Governor, and Richard Bellingham, Deputy Governor, but of the twenty-two, twelve are rated as merchants. Many of these are names which have clung to Massachusetts or were of those who became notable in later years. There was Edward Tyng, brother of William, both merchants, whose names are memorialized in that of a town in Middlesex County. Edward married the daughter of Francis Sears. Peter Oliver, William Paine, Henry Powning, Thomas Clark, Samuel Hutchinson, and the aforementioned John Coggan, are but a few of the shop-keepers who gave to the fund for a Town House.
John Cogan's Store-Of John Cogan's store of 1634, little is known except its location. It probably was little more than a trading post established with the expectation of barter with the Indians, rather than to sell to the villagers. If so, the character of the shop changed when it was realized that there were few Indians coming into Boston, and these too poverty stricken to be profitable customers. The needs of the first settlers were of a wide variety, and it is to be supposed that Mr. Cogan had a little crossroads place with his living quarters above the salesroom, his stock consisting of the strange jumble of goods like that of such emporiums in the frontiers of today. But Boston was a wealthy village ; before many years, Cogan was catering to a particular and dressy clien- tele. There is a bill of lading, dated 1650, which shows that he had received by the "Eagle" of London, £15 worth of haberdashery and "Crooked Lane ware," together with ten dozen of shoes and woolen yarn and worsted valued at £5. Whatever the size of his shop or his stock in trade, Cogan became a man of consequence in the community and the owner of other stores and estates. He came to Dorchester from Devon in England (noted for its laces ) and married Governor Winthrop's widow, who survived him but two years.
The First Trade Center in Massachusetts-Although John Cogan was the proprietor of the first store in Boston, his shop was not, as some authorities state, the first store in Massachusetts. Plymouth Colony had a shop, or trade post, it is thought, before there was a settler other than
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Blackstone in Boston. The "Merchant Adventures' Association of Lon- don," which financed the "Mayflower" and "Speedwell" expeditions to this country, set up a store near the present Bourne on Cape Cod. Or, to put it more accurately, Governor Bradford, Miles Standish and four other leaders in the Plymouth Colony, formed an organization to underwrite the debt of the parent association, and a store was their first mercantile effort to help rid the colony of its debt. The articles of agreement of this new organization reads, in part, as follows: "The above said parties are to have and free enjoy the pinass, lately built, the boat at Manamet and the shallop called the Bass-boat, and all the implements to them belonging that is to the store of the said company with all the whole stock of furs, fells, beads, corn, wampumpeak, hatches, knives, etc., that is now in the store, or any due the same on account." What seems to have been the cellar and the wide doorstep of this early store was uncov- ered in 1926. The site was one readily accessible to the Indians and to the Dutch traders, who came in boats by the way of Long Island Sound, through Buzzards Bay and the Manamet and Scussett rivers. It was reasonably near Plymouth, and intended as a center of barter for Indian, Dutch and Pilgrim. Furs, wampum-the part of clam shells used by the aborigine as money-and corn were legal tender over the counter, and the post proved a paying venture, helping to settle the debts of the colony. There is a letter, the original of which is now in the Royal Library at The Hague, Holland, which describes the visit of Isaac de Rasiere, secretary of Governor Minuit of New York. After telling of his trip up Buzzards Bay, he wrote: "At a small river where those of the Patucxet (Indian name for Plymouth) have a house made of hewn oak planks, where they keep two men winter and summer in order to maintain the trade and possession. They have built a shallop in order to go and look after the trade in sewan (Dutch for wampum)." So much for the first store in Massachusetts. It was, after all, a trading post, whose transactions were partially of a wholesale nature. The Boston store of John Cogan was more of a retail shop, and certainly the first of the "Boston Stores" now to be found in almost every fair-sized city in the United States, so named, no doubt, out of respect for the reputation established by the retail shops of the New England metropolis.
The compact Retail District of the City-The shopping district of Boston has, until recent years, been confined to a very small area, having a compactness which works very much to its advantage. The heart of the retail trade is made up of few streets; nearly all the larger depart- ment stores are within walking distance of each other. There has always been this clustering of trade places, the shopping district never drifting
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far from the spot where Cogan opened his shop. Philadelphia has still a fairly compact retail section, Chicago has hers scattered over miles of streets, and in New York the shopping district has been shifting to the north year by year, until now its greatest stores are separated from each other by sixty blocks. Except for the extensions out Boylston and another street or two, the retail district of Boston lies within a radius of a single mile. When one recalls that this is the shopping center of the metropolitan district, with its nearly two millions of people, one can realize how great is the advantage of such compactness to both buyers and sellers.
How the Mercantile Interest Came to be Concentrated-The concen- tration of trade within a small area was due to accident rather than to design, fortuitous conditions deciding it rather than plan. There were but a few hundred acres to the whole of Boston when it was settled. A great part of this was hilly, the Trimount covering a large area; the North End was cut off by a small stream and considered rather unde- sirable for home plots; the southeastern part was given over to a fortifi- cation ; there being nothing but swamp and water where the great Back Bay and present South End sections are. This left only the shores of the eastern bay (Home Cove), where the colonists wanted to build, with a result that almost from the beginning rules had to be made to keep enough land in the clear to provide the lanes needed to get about. In 1650, to quote from the much quoted "Wonder-working Providence :" "The chief Edifice of this City-like town is crowded on the Sea-bankes and wharfed out with great industry and cost, the buildings beautifull and large; some fairely set forth with Brick, Tile, Stone, and Slate, and orderly placed with comely streets." It is well to balance over against this description, one given by the Royal Commissioners of fifteen years later, who said that: "Their houses are generally wooden, their streets crooked, with little decency and no uniformity." Whichever description one takes, the fact remains that the densest populated part of Boston was crowded around the "landing place" for boats (Dock Square) and that it was many years before there were highways other than Washington and Hanover streets and the few others connected with them.
Washington Street the "Main Street" of the Town-It was Washing- ton Street, then broken into several parts and known by other names, which became the "Main Street" of the town, the seat of the principal public buildings, the shops, and the homes of the leading men. Few old streets of New England can boast of a more interesting or more notable history. State Street was the only one which rivaled it in importance, but for half a century was a place rather than a street. Tremont was but a straggling cartroad ; Boylston, known as Frog Lane; and Beacon was the "way to the Almshouse." Close to the wharves as they were built,
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occupying the longest stretch of level ground between Trimount and the shore, Washington Street, as the years gathered its links together, kept growing until now one may motor into Rhode Island over this thorough- fare. But in the first century and nearly a half more, it extended from a little way beyond State only to Frog Lane, or in modern nomenclature, Boylston Street.
A rough cart-road extended from Frog Lane on "towards Roxburie," but even when this became a traveled way, very few houses were built along it, and for two centuries there were few stores. The first link of this famous street comprised the curve between Adams Square and School Street ; the second led from School to Summer Street, then known as Mill Lane; the third stretched out to Frog Lane, or Boylston Street. About 1664, the road-for it was little more than that-was laid out to the present Dover Street, which was the end of the town in that direc- tion. The names by which the thoroughfare was variously designated were: "The Highwaye to Roxbury," "The High Street," "The Broad Way," "The Great Road Leading to Roxbury." It was not until 1708, that official names were given to streets. In the list of the formal titles chosen at that time, the various links of Washington wer called Corn Hill, Marlboro, Newbery and Orange Streets; these covering the dis- tance from "ye Old Fortification on ye neck" (just beyond Dover Street) to Mr. Clark the Pewterer's Shop (presumably Dock Square). These names held until 1788, when the selectmen began to realize that some of the Provincial names were unfitting to a town of the Republic. King was changed to State Street, Queen to Court, and so on; Washington was dedicated to the President, but was applied only to the road which extended from "Orange Street at the Fortification" to the bounds of the town at Roxbury Lane. In 1824, when the city of Boston was celebrat- ing its second birthday, the term Washington was given to all of the several links, and ultimately Washington Street became a cross-State thoroughfare extending beyond Providence in Rhode Island.
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