USA > New York > A short history of New York State > Part 18
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Keeping his family supplied with food was almost a full-time occupa- tion for the pioneer. There was plenty of game and fish, but hunting and fishing took time and skill. Some berries and fruits grew wild in the forests and provided food at certain seasons. During his first years the frontiersman sometimes ran out of food, especially if he became sick. His great standby was corn, which needed little preparation, yielded well, fattened his animals, and provided food for the table. Since the average settler had little money for such expensive imports as molasses or cane sugar, he sweetened his johnny cake with maple sugar of his own making. Tea brewed from herbs, cider pressed from apples, and whisky made from surplus cereals were common beverages.
The wife and daughters of the frontier farmer made clothing for the family out of the raw fibers of wool or flax and the hides of animals. Men and boys went barefoot during the summer and wore crude mocas- sins during the winter.
In retrospect, we tend to idealize the frontier farmer for his courage, his resourcefulness, and his individual freedom. Certainly these qualities were possessed by the frontiersman, but what we forget are the chains imposed by a life of self-sufficiency. Obviously the pioneer could not function as an efficient husbandman, carpenter, woodsman, lumberman,
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toolmaker, cobbler, and handy man at one and the same time. Providing food, clothing, and tools for the family meant drudgery and poverty re- lieved only by the hope that better times were coming after the first hardships of pioneering had passed.
Judged by modern standards all farms in this early period were pre- dominantly self-sufficient. The primary objective of the farmers was to escape self-sufficiency, not to achieve it. Only if they could find a crop worth carrying to market could settlers pay for their land, buy such neces- sities as ironware and salt, and hope for a rising standard of living. Farmers in the Hudson Valley were favorably situated to export their wheat, but those farther inland found that the cost of dragging a wagon ten to twenty miles over the miserable roads ate up the market value of the grain. During the winter, grains could be carried profitably for much greater distances by sleigh.
The difficulty of reaching external markets forced frontier farmers to make awkward adjustments. They produced potash, maple sugar, wool, and whisky, which were relatively valuable in relation to their bulk. Or they raised cattle, horses, or mules, which furnished their own trans- portation to the markets along the Hudson River. But the market was often glutted because other frontier farmers from Maine to Georgia were also driving animals to the seaboard. The obvious solution was the con- struction of turnpikes and improvements in waterways that would cut down the cost of transporting goods to market.
Between 1783 and 1825 an increasing proportion of farmers spent a growing share of their time producing foodstuffs for the markets as a result of the growth in the world demand for wheat and the expansion of the transportation network. War in Europe, raging from 1793 to 1815 with but few interruptions, increased the demand for wheat. New York wheat farmers and shippers rushed to fill the demand. Unfortunately, reliance upon a war boom exposed farmers to the dangers of rapid fluctu- ations in prices. For example, the Embargo Act of 1807 sent farm prices tumbling, while the reopening of trade in 1809, followed by the War of 1812, stimulated another upsurge of farm prices. Peace in 1815 brought a temporary price drop; but a revival of European demand bolstered prices until late in 1818. The disastrous collapse of prices at that time led James Wadsworth of Geneseo to observe in the following year:
Real estate has fallen in this county, Ontario, or it would be more correct to say improved farms have fallen 33 per cent in the last three years. Such is the scarcity of money that improved farms from Boston to Lake Erie will not sell. The consequence is that we have none of that class of settlers, who used to come among us, with money in their pockets from the sale of im- proved farms.
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Let us examine more closely the sources of cash income for the farmers of New York in this period. Both forest and farm provided products for the growing foreign and domestic markets.
Practically every farmer was also a lumberman. Each farmer built his home, barns, fences, and tools from wood hewn from his land and proc- essed, when necessary, by the small local sawmills. Farmers also dis- covered that they could sell the ashes from their burned-over clearings. They scraped together the ashes, ran water through them, and boiled the resulting lye in large kettles. The dried "black salts" formed potash, used for fertilizer and soap, which often brought in enough money to pay for the cost of clearing the land. As late as 1822 Governor De Witt Clinton listed ashes as the main rival of wheat in the exports of the state.
The development of the export trade in lumber differentiated the lumberman from the farmer. During the colonial period operators of sawmills on the streams flowing into the lower Hudson erected larger mills in order to cut out planks, boards, staves, and scantlings for their customers in the West Indies and the southern states. Log driving began on the Hudson in 1813 and led to the erection of great mills at Glens Falls, Sandy Hill, and Fort Edward. Lumbermen after 1800 rafted large amounts of lumber down the Delaware River. Pine lumber- ing became an important activity in New York, although the state did not displace Maine as the first lumbering state until the 1840's.
Other groups besides the farmers and sawmill operators benefited from the fine stands of timber. Hundreds of coopers made wood recep- tacles for wet and dry goods. In every community lived a cabinetmaker who produced chairs, tables, chests, beds, gunstocks, and other neces- sary items. Some craftsmen exhibited a superb skill, and examples of their work are still prized for aesthetic as well as antiquarian interest.
Another forest-farm industry was collecting bark from oak and hem- lock for the tanneries. The discovery of improved methods of tanning leather started a rush to the Catskills, where the stands of hemlock and oak were extensive. As a result, tanneries sprang up in almost every township, and New York became the leader in leather production. The largest establishments, such as that of Zadock Pratt in Greene County, tanned thousands of sides of sole leather each year.
During the 1790's a good many people dreamed of supplying the world with sweets from maple sugar groves. Among these was William Cooper, who in 1793 insisted that American farmers could fill all the domestic needs for sugar. Even hard-headed Dutch bankers sent out Gerrit Boon to buy up stands of maple in central New York. Boon hired a score of men to tap the trees and to build wooden troughs leading
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to large vats. Unfortunately, wind, rain, and sun warped and cracked the troughs. Before the season of 1794 was over, Boon had lost $15,000 of his sponsor's money.
Many small farmers supplied their own needs and sold part of their surplus of maple sugar. Practically all members of the family could help tap the trees in April when the sap began to run. Boiling down the sap in huge kettles was an exciting event for the children.
Wheat brought in the greatest cash returns, although corn was more valuable in feeding the farm family and the livestock. Wheat yields were good, ranging from thirty to forty bushels an acre on fresh soils to an average of twelve bushels in the older fields. Wheat was valuable enough in relation to its weight to permit farmers to carry it to Hudson River warehouses from points as far west as Utica. Since wheat stored well, farmers could hold it back until wintertime and take it by sleigh to Albany. The center of wheat production gradually moved westward. The output of central New York increased after turnpikes reached the area, and the Genesee Valley won the nickname of "The Granary of America" soon after the Erie Canal reached Rochester in 1823.
Wheatgrowers in eastern New York were experiencing many troubles during the first decades of the nineteenth century. Constant cropping had reduced the yield, and winterkilling was proving very destructive in the upland regions. During the Revolution, the Hessian fly ravaged the wheatfields of Long Island and gradually spread up the lower Hudson Valley. Smut, rust, and mildew, not to mention grasshoppers and Canadian thistle, blighted and destroyed many fields. John Jay, writing from his estate in Westchester County, complained in 1811, "To sow wheat here is like taking a ticket in a lottery; more blanks than prizes. The fly destroys more than we reap." The quality of New York wheat declined, alarming farm leaders, legislators, and editors. In 1821 they forced through the state legislature a rigorous inspection system to insure more careful grading of wheat and flour. Within a short time New York breadstuffs had regained their reputation for high quality, a reputation which the millers of Rochester and Oswego were to keep alive for several decades.
The development of New York as a grazing and dairy state was firmly established by 1800. Like most frontiers, New York had its cow- boys, and its drovers, who purchased the stunted "native cattle" from the farmers. Periodically, the drovers would take them to the slaughter- houses at Troy and Albany. Closely allied with the cattle business was the raising of horses and mules, which enjoyed a ready sale in the southern states and the West Indies.
A few farmers sold butter and cheese. Farmers in Orange County specialized in making fine butter. Yankee immigrants in Herkimer and
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Oneida counties found the hill pastures ideal for grazing and by 1825 had firmly established that region as one of the nation's primary cheese- producing centers.
Chancellor Livingston estimated in 1813 that a farm of 130 acres had eight or nine horses or four horses and four oxen, as well as ten cows and six yearlings. The average farmer had about twenty-five sheep and swine. The wool and beef were primarily for his own use, but his surplus did bring in some cash income. The depredations of wolves and dogs and severe winters had kept down the number of sheep in colonial days. The average farmer paid little attention to the production of wool for the market until 1807, when fine wool from Merino sheep rose to two dollars a pound. The rush to build flocks sent the price of a Merino ram to a thousand dollars and more. The bubble burst in 1810-1811 after some twenty-five thousand sheep were imported from Spain. By 1815 farmers could buy Merinos for one dollar each.
The Merino craze, however, helped establish sheep raising in New York, especially in the hill towns of the eastern part of the state, al- though many factors continued to threaten the industry's existence. Wolves and winter severities reduced the flocks. After the slump in wool prices which followed 1815, many disgusted farmers killed their flocks for the tallow and the hides. The expansion of wool manufacture in the 1820's helped revive the sheep-raising industry.
How much income did the farmers receive from their various sources? The fragmentary statistics available give little help in answer- ing this question. One estimate is that the average farmer had a cash income of approximately thirty dollars a year. His real income, in- cluding the food, clothing, and tools used on the farm, was consider- ably higher. Furthermore, most farmers were actually creating capital goods in the form of improved fields, fences, barns, and buildings which would eventually produce a greater income, if not for himself, at least for his children. On the other hand, farmers were using up their timber resources and destroying the fertility of the soil by care- less agricultural techniques.
Farmers in New York followed roughly the same practices as farmers in neighboring states. The abundance of land and the scarcity of labor operated with telling force in the direction of extensive rather than intensive cultivation. An almost inevitable corollary was the custom of cropping the land until it was exhausted. Unfortunately, farm imple- ments were so primitive and inefficient that they did not permit the economy of labor necessary to compensate for the extensive cultiva- tion. The three-crop system in common use-grain, grass, and fallow- differed little from the agricultural practices of medieval Europe,
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while the tools-cradle, harrow, wooden plow-stemmed from ancient Rome.
A few voices denounced the husbandry as slovenly and predatory as contrasted with the practices in England. Robert R. Livingston challenged the validity of such comparisons. Should not our agricul- ture, he argued, be judged in the light of the return it makes for the capital employed? Americans were quite right to take advantage of their greatest assets-timber and cheap land. The true test was output per worker and the standard of living, which, Livingston maintained, were fully as high in New York as they were in rural England.
Perhaps as good a description of New York agriculture as can be found are the comments of George W. Featherstonhaugh, who served as corresponding secretary of the state Board of Agriculture. He noted in 1819:
Until very recently the farming operations which have come under my notice in this state, may be generally described as follows. Indifferent grass made into hay at unseasonable times, and abounding in the worst weeds that can infest the ground. ... Dung of several years standing, making the cold barnyard a perfect mud hole. Fat sheep weighing eight pounds a quarter; other meat in proportion. Wheat from ten to twenty bushels an acre; corn fifteen to thirty. On the arrival of winter, the sheep, the cows, the lambs, the calves, the oxen, finding their way to a bad shed, or no shed, in a bleak barn- yard, and remaining in that situation all winter; having a little hay flung to them two or three times a day; the cows giving a quart or a pint at a milking. I have often seen the emaciated cows, after passing the night in a drizzling rain, freezing as it fell, incapable of rising in the morning ... On the ar- rival of spring, the scanty hay being almost exhausted, the whole stock finding nothing more to be had at the barn, again sneaks off to the meadows, through the well-known gaps, poach and tear what had not been quite destroyed in November.
Scientific agriculture made a little headway between 1783 and 1825. However, the experiments of gentlemen farmers, the exhibits at county fairs, and the spread of information in the press helped to popularize the principles of sound husbandry.
The landed aristocrats, following the example of their English com- peers, were the first to urge and to adopt improved methods. They organized, in 1791, the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, and Manufactures, which became, in 1804, the Society for the Promo- tion of Useful Arts. The membership included such distinguished figures as Robert R. Livingston, John Jay, Stephen Van Rensselaer, De Witt Clinton, and James Duane. Probably their greatest achieve- ment was persuading the farmers of the lower Hudson Valley to adopt
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clover crops and to fertilize with gypsum. Artificial grasses, providing better pastures, helped the growth of the dairy industry. The "miracu- lous" effects of gypsum upon the lime-deficient and worn-out fields won many converts in the region.
Elkanah Watson, however, was the first agricultural leader to reach the great mass of dirt farmers. A native of Plymouth, Massachusetts, he had worked himself up from an apprenticeship to a top position in the firm of the Providence merchant, John Brown. After spending several years in the salons and countinghouses of France and England, Watson settled in Albany, where he promoted banks, canals, schools, and other enterprises. His fortune made, Watson bought a farm in Pittsfield. The craze for Merino sheep captured his interest, and in 1807 he exhibited two sheep in the public square. Three years later he invited his neighbors to exhibit their livestock. The resulting Berkshire County Fair was a huge success and attracted nation-wide attention. New York citizens begged Watson to help them organize county agri- cultural societies. With his help, fifty-two out of fifty-eight counties in New York formed societies within a few years.
The Schoharie County Fair in 1819 affords a good example of the pageantry which made the county fair an impressive ceremony and a gala occasion for the countryside. Bells and cannon awakened the citizens at dawn. Then a parade, headed by clergymen and agricultural leaders, exhibited agricultural machinery and choice specimens from orchard and field. A band played spirited music and martial airs. On this particular occasion the procession marched to the church, where the service began with the reading of an ode and a prayer. After the president's address, the proud winners of awards marched to the rostrum to receive their prizes. When the service was over, the mem- bers retired to the courthouse for dinner. An agricultural ball climaxed the day's festivities.
State financial aid for agriculture rewarded Watson's efforts. In 1819 the legislature created a Board of Agriculture with the duty of pub- lishing an annual report and distributing $10,000 a year to the county societies for prizes. Much good work was done, despite charges of favoritism and waste, but the economy bloc in the legislature cut out the appropriation in 1825.
Such private organizations and public agencies made important be- ginnings and inspired a small but growing number of farmers to adopt better techniques of farming. More attention was paid to manuring the fields, selecting better seeds, and planting fallow crops. Onlookers at the plowing matches were quick to see the superiority of the cast-iron plow over the inefficient wooden plow. Nevertheless, most farmers con-
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tinued to mine the soil as their fathers had done before them. Im- proved agricultural practices were not widely adopted until after 1825, when the decline of wheat culture in eastern New York and the grow- ing demand for butter and cheese speeded up the shift toward a more diversified agriculture.
Chapter 15
Founding the Business
Empire
But to the York Stater of a hardier time the Grand Western Canal was the pride and glory of the nation, vaunted as the eighth wonder of the world. We had wrought it with our hands and filled it with our sweat. We stood ready to fight and die for it .- Attributed to MYRON ADAMS, grandfather of Samuel Hopkins Adams
THE Empire State had won an incontestable claim to that title by 1825. Its population outstripped all contenders. Its farmers had cleared millions of acres and were exporting large amounts of wheat and lumber products. Its merchants were growing wealthy as the wharves of Manhattan Island attracted an increasing share of the western, coastal, and transatlantic trade. Its capitalists had constructed turn- pikes and were establishing New York's industrial supremacy. Further- more, its statesmen had carried to completion the Erie Canal-the most ambitious project of the period.
Table 1 shows an amazing story of growth. Note how New York in a period of forty years increased its total commerce approximately ten- fold and also handled a notably increasing share of the nation's ex- ports and imports. The unusually high figure for 1801 reflects the great amount of goods re-exported from New York during the struggle be- tween Great Britain and France.
Several factors helped to lift New York from the post-Revolutionary slump. The opening of the China trade, French purchases of American foodstuffs, the reopening of the British West Indies to American ship- ping, and the restoration of confidence among businessmen spurred recovery. Business had revived before the ratification of the Constitu- tion in 1787, but businessmen were reassured by the clauses in that
173
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A SHORT HISTORY OF NEW YORK STATE
Table 1. Exports and imports, 1791-1831.
Year
Combined imports and exports (nearest million )
Percentage of national trade Imports Exports
1791
$ 8,000,000
21
10
1801
45,000,000
23
20
1811
24,000,000
23
20
1821
36,000,000
37
20
1831
82,000,000
50
27
document prohibiting states from interfering with interstate commerce, issuing paper money, and impairing the obligation of contract.
War in Europe brought good times for merchants in New York because both Britain and France clamored for goods and shipping. New York exports, valued at $2,535,790 in 1792, soared to $26,357,963 in 1807. By the turn of the century New York had outdistanced both Philadelphia and Boston in the export and import trade and in foreign and coastwise shipping. Profits from shipping were high despite the seizures by Britain and France of cargoes bound for the enemy.
The Embargo Act of 1807, followed by the War of 1812, brought the boom in foreign commerce to an end. Idle ships lay at the wharves, and the British fleet off Sandy Hook took many prizes. When news came in 1815 that America and Britain had signed the Treaty of Ghent, the streets of New York were filled with cheering crowds and torchlight parades. During the next decade New York clinched its position as the nation's great port by establishing control of three major trade routes: the transatlantic shuttle, the coastal trade, and the Erie Canal.
The textile trade came to be centered in New York as an incidental result of the city's lively import trade. When British manufacturers se- lected New York as the place to dump their surplus textiles, swarms of buyers were attracted to the auction rooms of Manhattan. In 1817 the legislature helped along this flood of imports by providing that all goods offered at auction must be sold. Hoping for bargains, thousands of country merchants frequented the auction houses of New York City.
The beginning of regular and frequent packet service between New York and Liverpool also proved helpful in boosting New York's share of the nation's imports from 30 per cent in 1815 to 51 per cent in 1825. The Black Ball Line, chartered in 1817, immediately drew the better class of freight to its packets, although it performed an even more important function by bringing a stream of immigrants to the city.
The little-known coasting trade rivaled the transatlantic trade in ton- nage. The number of vessels involved was considerably greater, even when the hundreds of tiny local craft plying Long Island Sound and New
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FOUNDING THE BUSINESS EMPIRE
York Bay are omitted. The excellent harbor and central position of New York enabled shippers to capture the major share of the business of distributing imported goods and collecting foodstuffs from many seashore communities.
Most remarkable of all, however, was the success of the Manhattan merchants in getting control of the large export trade in cotton. The "cotton triangle" had three corners: the cotton ports ( Charleston, Savan- nah, Mobile, and New Orleans), the European ports (Liverpool, Le Havre, and others ), and New York. A majority of the vessels engaged in the cotton trade sailed directly to Europe from southern ports, returning to New York with many immigrants and such items of trade as cloth from the Lancashire mills. Subsequently they sailed southward with merchan- dise or in ballast. The alternative route, using only two sides of the triangle, brought even more profits for New Yorkers. Much cotton reached European ports only after being re-exported from New York. The expla- nation for this rather curious shift from the direct trade is that many packets leaving New York had more than ample room for eastbound cargoes. Furthermore, the South was preoccupied with developing wild lands, acquiring more slaves, and growing more cotton, all of which tended to absorb the relatively small amounts of liquid capital in that region and to attract the energies of its able men, to the neglect of trade and commerce.
Finally, the trade routes to the interior helped to make New York a commercial center. The farmers along the Hudson-Mohawk rivers and later the Erie Canal ordered their goods from the commission houses located on the tip of Manhattan. It should be stressed, however, that New York City had already won commercial primacy before De Witt Clinton had lifted the first spadeful of earth for the canal in 1817.
A variety of business concerns-notably wholesaling, retailing, banking, insurance, and manufacturing establishments-grew in New York City in conjunction with the extraordinary rise in foreign commerce. The general course of business tended to follow closely the ebb and flow of foreign trade. Other types of merchandizing carried on in the metropolis will be described in Chapter 21.
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