it is not surprising that a table of "Goods and Produce imported into the 

 several Provinces in North America . . . ." in 1770 included 70 tons of 

 imported dyewoods (Sheffield, 1784, table 4), even though these were 

 expensive and their availability fluctuated. 



Imported dyes were generally superior to the domestic product 

 due to lack of knowledgeable American technicians. Even when high 

 quality raw materials were produced here lack of experience in preparing 

 them reduced their market value. Only indigo succeeded for a span of 

 about thirty years, boosted by a sixpence-per-pound bounty payment which 

 was finally cut off at the start of the Revolutionary War. In producing 

 good quality indigo it was important to pick the leaves and process them 

 at their peak of maturity— just before the plant flowered. Some South 

 Carolina planters, unable to ferment the leaves all at once after they 

 matured, allowed them to remain in the fields two to three weeks after they 

 ripened. This indigo had to be marketed as a second-rate product, since 

 it could not yield the maximum quantity of dye. Planters in Bengal, India, 

 avoided such a situation by simply staggering plantings. Thus indigo, 

 successfully marketed before the Revolutionary War, could not compete 

 in price with the East Indian product after the conflict. When southern 

 planters learned that rice and cotton were more profitable, these superseded 

 indigo as their cash crops. 



Certainly many attempts had been made to exploit the natural resources 

 of the colonies since the first colonists' arrival. English naturalists recorded 

 in illustrated volumes their observations on the flora and fauna of the 

 new land and their possible uses, while colonial governors sent specimens 

 to England for study. These efforts showed the great interest in natural 

 curiosities typical of the 1 7th and 1 8th centuries, and also the desire of the 

 English to find new sources of cheap raw materials. All efforts toward using 

 dye drugs to this latter end eventually failed. Then because other crops 

 proved more profitable, dye plants were not cultivated in the United States 

 on a commercial scale during the 19th century. 



Before the Revolutionary War high import duties added to the prices of 

 dyes. The post-war situation found dyers stiL suffering the hardships of 

 high tariffs imposed on dyes imported from European countries and their 

 colonies. Asa Ellis clearly expressed the Americans' problems and their 

 possible solutions in these remarks: 



For a great proportion of the ingredients employed in dyes, we depend on Europe to 

 furnish ... As we attempt an independence of their markets, they increase their 

 duties on dyestuffs which we import. Not one cask, of Cochineal, can we obtain from 

 our sister continent, South- America; from thence it must pop through the hands of 

 Spain and England. From England we receive it, at an extravagant price . . . Foreign 

 nations receive a large revenue from this country, for the dyestuffs we import. Does it 



