EAST OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER. 123 



other way of reaching Europe without great expense and risk of cap- 

 ture but by the aid and under cover of a neutral flag. The United 

 States was happily situated in relation to the West India Islands, 

 whose ports were now thrown open to them, and their long habitual 

 intercourse with them naturally threw a large share of this trade into 

 the hands of American merchants. The trade did not stop at the West 

 Indies, for the encouragement given by the act of 1789 had increased 

 the tonnage of the United States, and the* spirit and enterprise of the 

 people led them to employ their increased shipping in the more distant 

 trade of the East Indies, and, indeed, every other part of the world. 

 And so it came about that American vessels engrossed nearly the en- 

 tire carrying trade of Europe and conveyed thither or to American 

 ports to be reexported, the valuable articles of colonial produce, such 

 as sugar, coffee, indigo, pepper, and spices of all kinds. These and 

 other articles were allowed, under certain regulations, to be exported 

 from the United States with a drawback of the duties paid or secured 

 to be paid on their importation. 



This transfer of the carrying trade of Europe gave, in consequence, 

 an immense impulse to the foreign commerce and agriculture of the 

 United States. The high prices of agricultural products during the 

 next few years, and the great profits on shipping, stopped investment 

 in manufactures, withdrew capital from them, and concentrated money 

 and enterprise in shipbuilding, which increased to a degree unparalleled 

 in ancient or modern history. The manufactures of Great Britain found 

 good markets in the United States; the manufactures of woolen did 

 not increase in the United States, and all along the seaboard, where 

 prosperity reigned, British cloths were worn principally, and the do- 

 mestic and household production was diminished or pushed westward 

 with the tide of emigration moving in that direction. 



The new and back counties supplied themselves with clothing from 

 the fleeces of their own sheep. Outside of the seacoast towns, and 

 away from the few factories just struggling into life, the New England 

 people still wove and wore homespun. In New York every farmer 

 manufactured in his own family all the cloth he wanted, and as he 

 moved westward his sheep, the spinning-wheel and the loom went 

 with him, and the wool that he manufactured was fine; worth at that 

 time 4:8. per pound, when a market was to be had, but as every farmer 

 raised a few sheep the sale was inconsiderable. In New Jersey, the 

 country adjacent to New York and Philadelphia supplied itself from 

 these cities with foreign goods, and so great had the rage for foreign 

 goods become that it attracted the thoughtful attention of patriotic 

 men. One of them said : 



By what strange fatality has our homespun gone out of fashion in a country that 

 ought to glory in it, and in which its perpetuity would annually have saved thou- 

 sands of pounds? How I have been delighted to Lehold, in the county of Bergen 

 piles of this home-wrought woolen, not only intended for the dress of our men, but 



