302 Percy Wells Bidwell 



Indies yield a profit so much beyond what can be obtained from grain 

 that in several of the sugar islands, it is true economy in the planter, 

 rather to buy provisions from others, than to raise them by his own 

 labor. The produce of a single acre of his cane fields, will purchase 

 more Indian corn than can be raised on five times that extent of 

 land, and pay besides the freight from other countries. Thus not 

 only their household furniture, their implements of husbandry, 

 their clothing, but even a great part of their daily sustenance, are 

 regularly sent them from America or Europe."^ The increase in the 

 output of the staples and the growth of population are both evidences 

 of this tendency to a more and more commercialized agriculture.^ 



By 1810 a large part of the timber products and food-stuffs con- 

 sumed in the British islands was imported from the United States.^ 

 In the years 1801-1803 the average annual amounts of the principal 

 commodities imported were: Corn, 500,000 bu.; bread and flour, 

 233,000 bbls.; Indian meal, 28,000 bbls.; beef and pork, 36,000 bbls.; 

 fish (dried) 50,000 quintals; fish (fresh) 23,000 bbls. Of timber and 

 timber products, there were annually imported from the United States: 

 pine boards, 27,000,000 feet; 36,000,000 shingles; 12,000,000 staves; 

 and 10,000 tons of miscellaneous timber.'* The value of these commo- 

 modities and others, such as live stock, horses, mules, dairy products 

 and vegetables shipped from ports of the United States to the pos- 

 sessions of France, England, Spain, Denmark and Sweden in these 

 islands in the ten years, 1802-1811, amounted on the average to 

 $1,225,000 per year. In the first years of this period the annual 

 export was considerably greater than the average, because of the 



' Edwards, History, II. 459. 



' Jedidiah, Morse, in The American Universal Geography. 6 ed. Boston. 1812. 

 Vol. I., p. 666, estimates the increase in population in Jamaica at 100,000 in the 

 period 1787-1811. 



^ The importance which the West India colonists ascribed to this trade may be 

 appreciated by reading some of the pamphlets of a political nature printed in 

 London 1800-1810. In the discussion of the impending war and of the advan- 

 tages to be gained by opening more widely the ports of the islands to the Ameri- 

 can trade, the dependence of the West Indies on the United States for food sup- 

 plies is strongly emphasized. Three typical pamphlets of this sort are Brown, 

 Alexander Campbell. Colony Commerce. London, (ca. 1790); Jordan, G. W., 

 Claims of the British West India Colonists. London. 1804; and Medford, Macall. 

 Oil without Vinegar, ... or British, American, and West Indian Interests 

 Considered. London. 1807. 



■* These figures are obtained by division of the totals for the three years given 

 by Medford, Oil without Vinegar, app. No. 2. He claims to have had them from 

 official documents. 



