POLITICAL AND COMMERCIAL 55 



In and around Portland, Maine, thirty 

 firms failed the first year of the embargo, 

 and by 1809 the market house was turned 

 into a soup kitchen, and long lines of soup 

 kettles provided daily nourishment for 

 hundreds of the poor. 1 New Haven 2 and 

 other towns adopted the same device, and 

 according to the "Salem Gazette" of Feb. 

 7, 1809, "Twelve hundred persons in this 

 town, about one ninth of the population, 

 depend for their daily subsistence on the 

 soup establishments lately instituted. If to 

 these be added those supported by private 

 charities, it will probably be found, that 

 one fifth of the inhabitants of this industri- 

 ous, enterprising and wealthy town of Sa- 

 lem are supported by alms." Marblehead 

 was no better off. " Her fishermen were idle, 

 eighty-seven fishing smacks rotting at her 

 wharves, and the $2000 appropriated by 

 the town for the suffering, insufficient to 

 give relief." 3 Even under these conditions, 



1 Portland in the Past, p. 426. 



2 New Haven Hist. Soc. Papers, p. 168. 



3 Rhodes, History of Marblehead, p. 231. 



