The fisheries and the shipyards were great sources of wealth, especially for New England.The cod fishers numbered several hundred vessels and the whalers about forty.Thousands of citizens living along the seashore and the rivers fished more or less to add to the local food supply.The deep-sea fishermen exported a part of their catch, dried and salted.Yankee vessels sailed to all ports of the world and carried the greater part of the foreign commerce of the United States.Flour, tobacco, rice, wheat, corn, dried fish, potash, indigo, and staves were the principal exports.Great Britain was the best customer, with the French West Indies next, and then the British West Indies.The principal imports came from the same countries.Imports and exports practically balanced each other, at about twenty million dollars annually, or about five dollars a head.The great merchants owned ships and many of them, such as John Hancock of Boston, and Stephen Girard of Philadelphia, had grown very rich.
Inland transportation depended on horses and oxen or boats.There were few good roads, sometimes none at all save bridle paths and trails.The settlers along the river valleys used boats almost entirely.Stage-coaches made the journey from New York to Boston in four days in summer and in six in winter.Two days were required to go between New York and Philadelphia.Forty to fifty miles a day was the speed of the best coaches, provided always that they did not tumble into the ditch.In many parts of the country one must needs travel on horseback or on foot.
Even the wealthiest Americans of those days had few or none of the articles which we regard today as necessities of life.The houses were provided with open--which, however cheerful, did not keep them warm--or else with Franklin's stoves.To strike a fire one must have the flint and tinderbox, for matches were unknown until about 1830.Candles made the darkness visible.There was neither plumbing nor running water.Food was cooked in the ashes or over an open fire.
The farmer's tools were no less crude than his wife's.His plough had been little improved since the days of Rameses.He sowed his wheat by hand, cut it with a sickle, flailed it out upon the floor, and laboriously winnowed away the chaff.
In that same year, 1790, came a great boon and encouragement to inventors, the first Federal Patent Act, passed by Congress on the 10th of April.Every State had its own separate patent laws or regulations, as an inheritance from colonial days, but the Fathers of the Constitution had wisely provided that this function of government should be exercised by the nation.* The Patent Act, however, was for a time unpopular, and some States granted monopolies, particularly of transportation, until they were forbidden to do so by judicial decision.
