The Rise of Manufactures. 131 



to spinning and weaving. The history of the attempt to raise 

 pitch and tar in New England has been related.^ 



In 1708, Bridger wrote of the fulfillment of his prophecy. 

 The people had returned to the woolen manufacture, " so that 

 not one in 40 but wears his own carding and spinning." "When 

 I tell them they can get money by the trade (in tar and pitch) 

 to buy two coats while they are carding and spinning to make 

 one, they will not believe unless they see it tried before their 

 eyes."2 The next year, he wrote again that the woolen manu- 

 facture was constantly increasing, instead of the production of 

 pitch and tar, although it was to be hoped that, when the fron- 

 tiers were less exposed, conditions would be more favorable to 

 the latter industry.' 



New York, like the New England provinces, lacked com- 

 modities to make returns for English goods, which want, wrote 

 Lord Cornbury to the Board of Trade, " sets men's wits to 

 work, and has put them on a trade which I am sure will hurt 

 England, in a little time, viz., the woolen manufacture on Long 

 Island and Connecticut. These colonies, which are but twigs 

 to the main tree, ought to be kept entirely dependent upon and 

 subservient to England, and that can never be if they are suf- 

 fered to go on in the notions they have, that, as they are En- 

 glishmen, so they may set up the same manufactures here as 

 people may do in England."* In 1708, Caleb Heathcote, then 

 a member of the Council in New York and an applicant for a 

 contract to supply naval stores, reported to the Board that three- 

 quarters of the linen and woolen which the people used was 

 made by themselves, and if this were not stopped, they would 

 carry it a great deal farther. Some persons had asked his assist- 

 ance in setting up a manufactory of fine stuiTs, but he had dis- 

 couraged the design.^ Governor Dudley, of Massachusetts, 

 reported, in 1709, that the woolen trade with England had 



iCf. Part II, Ch. I. 



2Mr. Bridger to the Board of Trade, B. T. New Eng., R: 53. 

 3Mr. Bridger to the Board of Trade, B. T, New Eng., S: 46. 

 *Docts. relating to the History of New York, Vol. IV, p. n68. 

 ^Docts. relating to the History of New York. Vol. V, p. 63. 



