^? I 



292 Percy Wells Bidwell 



to the farmers of southern New England was the market thus supplied? 

 That the farmers in the near vicinity, say within a radius of fifteen 

 or twenty miles, of the largest city, Boston, benefited largely from 

 their opportunities to sell farm produce, is a well-established fact.^ 

 The area affected by the markets in such smaller cities as Salem, New- 

 buryport. Providence, and Nantucket was narrower in proportion 

 as the numbers of their inhabitants were less. Finally in a third 

 class of towns of 3,000 to 7,000 population, such as New Haven, 

 New London, Norwich, Middletown and Hartford, farming seems to 

 have been the occupation of about one-half the inhabitants,^ and 

 consequently the influence of their markets was hardly appreciable. 



A simple calculation of the relative strength of the commercial 

 as compared with the agricultural population may serve to make 

 this summary more concrete: 



In the nine towns on Massachusetts Bay there were 85,000 persons 



On the eastern end of Cape Cod 11,000 " 



In the town of Nantucket 6,800 " 



In five towns on Long Island Sound 32,000 " 



In two towns on the Connecticut River 11,000 " 



Total 145,800 



If we accept the figures for New Haven as typical of the conditions 

 in the last two groups of towns we may subtract one-half the popu- 

 lation of each of these groups, as representing the agricultural element 

 in these towns. The total then becomes 124,300. This figure, it 

 should be understood, does not represent a total of all persons in the 

 three states of southern New England who were engaged in non- 

 agricultural activities. It is intended merely to give an approximate 

 indication of the size of commercial and manufacturing groups who 

 were so concentrated as to furnish a definite and reliable market for 

 the sale of agricultural products. These groups amounted to 15.4 

 per cent of the total of the three states, 809,000 in 1810; but their 

 importance to the farmers at large was much less than this figure 

 would indicate. A glance at the map (facing p. 277) will show how 

 inaccessible this market was to the great body of inland farmers. 

 Of what importance to a farmer in the center of Worcester County, 

 Massachusetts, or in Tolland County, Connecticut, was the market 

 in Salem, Newburyport or Nantucket? We have already seen that 



1 See supra, pp. 278-279. 



*As we have seen in the case of New Haven, 45 per cent, were so occupied; 

 this proportion would naturally have been larger in the smaller towns in this class. 



