ships and Cargoes : 187 



for the construction of houses, woods suitable for the building of fur- 

 niture, staves for barrels and casks, masts for vessels and naval stores; 

 codfish and other food fishes were, of course, also an important prod- 

 uct of the colonies. 



Whaling was also an early American industry. It developed first 

 in Massachusetts Bay and then spread to Nantucket and Long Island. 

 Long before the American Revolution, American whale ships were 

 sailing to English ports to dispose of their products. The colonies 

 did make early and heroic efforts at manufacture, first, to meet their 

 own needs and second, to produce goods which could be sent to Eng- 

 land in exchange for the goods which they could not produce them- 

 selves. 



The preceding chapter mentioned a number of the groups that 

 went into the composition of the North American population. Each 

 of these groups did two things. It maintained its own integrity and 

 a set of common interests that has continued to give it a recognizable 

 unity but each has also added elements to the general culture of the 

 states of the United States or the provinces of Canada. 



These national or cultural characteristics have added interest and 

 richness to the life of the continent. These contributions range all the 

 way from our concepts of laws and liberty and other abstract matters 

 such as our attitude toward education and science, to the fields of 

 architecture and the decorative arts and finally down to such everyday 

 matters as our favorite foods, our methods of cooking and our ways 

 of arranging and decorating a home. 



Nearly every one of the groups that have gone into the making 

 of the American population have also left abiding contacts with the 

 Old World that have continued to influence such matters as the way 

 of doing business, trade and transport across the Atlantic. Even the 

 groups that left Europe in protest of conditions that they believed to 

 be intolerable were still bound by racial, religious, linguistic as well 

 as by family interest to the old country. Even in protest, revolt and 

 flight, man is seldom able to divorce himself from long-standing 

 interests and associations. 



Every group of colonists in America began sending back to Europe 

 articles of trade. These reflected the characteristics of the new coast 

 and of the country beyond but they also reflected the activities and 

 interests of the colonists. Accident and stress of circumstances af- 

 fected some of the very early shipments made from America to 

 Europe but soon each colony began to develop characteristic prod- 

 ucts. 



