Zapor Gane - Section 02

On the one side, it involved the export of raw materials and agricultural produce. The Southern colonies produced for shipping, tobacco, rice, tar, pitch, and pine; the Middle colonies, grain, flour, furs, lumber, and salt pork; New England, fish, flour, rum, furs, shoes, and small articles of manufacture. The variety of products was in fact astounding. A sarcastic writer, while sneering at the idea of an American union, once remarked of colonial trade: "What sort of dish will you make? New England will throw in fish and onions. The middle states, flax-seed and flour. Maryland and Virginia will add tobacco. North Carolina, pitch, tar, and turpentine. South Carolina, rice and indigo, and Georgia will sprinkle the whole composition with sawdust. Such an absurd jumble will you make if you attempt to form a union among such discordant materials as the thirteen British provinces."

Measured against the immense business of modern times, colonial commerce seems perhaps trivial. That, however, is not the test of its significance. It must be considered in relation to the growth of English colonial trade in its entirety--a relation which can be shown by a few startling figures. The whole export trade of England, including that to the colonies, was, in 1704, L6,509,000. On the eve of the American Revolution, namely, in 1772, English exports to the American colonies alone amounted to L6,024,000; in other words, almost as much as the whole foreign business of England two generations before. At the first date, colonial trade was but one-twelfth of the English export business; at the second date, it was considerably more than one-third. In 1704, Pennsylvania bought in English markets goods to the value of L11,459; in 1772 the purchases of the same colony amounted to L507,909. In short, Pennsylvania imports increased fifty times within sixty-eight years, amounting in 1772 to almost the entire export trade of England to the colonies at the opening of the century. The American colonies were indeed a great source of wealth to English merchants.

• Bernardo Gallegos - History of Reading Special Interest Group: Bernardo Gallegos, Past President
• Bernardo Gallegos - American Educational Studies Association: Bernardo Gallegos, Past President
• Bernardo Gallegos - Journal of Thought: Bernardo Gallegos Editorial Review Board
• Sporgus No. 08 on the Net

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