304 Percy Wells Bidwell 



exports of salted beef and pork, butter, cheese and lard, potatoes 

 and onions; one-seventh of the hams and bacon and practically 

 all of the fresh meat and live stock. For these products the West 

 India islands formed the only foreign market. Assuming that the 

 share of the New England states in this market remained constant 

 in the next twenty years, we may form a rough estimate of the total 

 amounts of their exports thither in 1810, by applying the proportions 

 given above to the average annual exports of these products from the 

 whole United States for the ten years, 1801-1810.^ According to this 

 calculation, the three states under consideration would have been 

 shipping about 960 tons of butter, 486 tons of cheese, 850 tons of 

 lard, 9\ tons of hams and bacon; of beef and pork together, 75,000 

 bbls., 22,160 head of live stock and 4,000 dozen of poultry. 



Estimate of the Importance of these Markets. 



For a comparison of the importance of each of the three markets, 

 in the commercial towns, in the Southern states, and in the West 

 Indies to the New England farmer we must rely on three criteria: 

 (1) the size of the non-agricultural or specialized agricultural popu- 

 lation in each region, (2) the extent of their dependence on outside 

 sources of food supply, and (3) the amount of competition from other 

 food-producing regions for the various markets. Tested in all these 

 ways, the West Indian market seems to have been most important. 

 The population to be supplied was from eight to ten times as large 

 as in either of the other two regions; it was nearly as dependent on 

 outside supplies of foodstuffs as were the commercial towns along the 

 coast of New England, and more so than the rice and cotton plan- 

 tations in South Carolina and Georgia; and, most important of all, 

 it had no back-country of general agriculture. This last fact, how- 

 ever, does not mean that the New Englanders had a monopoly of 



*The average annual exports from the United States, 1801-1810, were as fol- 

 lows: Beef, 76,300 bbls;. pork, 59,000 bbls.; butter, 1,926,000 lbs.; cheese, 972,000 

 lbs.; lard, 1,700,000 lbs.; hams and bacon, 1,340,000 lbs.; potatoes, 70,000 bu.; 

 cattle, 6,400 head; horses, 4,300; sheep, 7,760; hogs, 3,500; poultry, 4,000 dozen. 

 AU of these items, except the live stock show a considerable increase over the 

 figures for 1791. This is especially noticeable in the figures for butter, cheese and 

 lard, the totals for the three being over 200 per cent greater at the later date. 

 The total of live stock had, on the other hand, decreased from 38,000 head (aver- 

 age for the years 1791-1794) to 22,000. This would seem to show that the far- 

 mers of New England were finding it more profitable to fatten and slaughter their 

 stock at home and to give greater attention to dairy products as exports. 



These figures are taken from Pitkin, Timothy. A Statistical View of the 

 Commerce of the United States of America. Hartford. 1816. pp. 89-129. 



