Page:Economic History of Virginia Vol 2.djvu/480

 supplies from abroad. There was no disposition among the inhabitants to foster manufactures on a large and important scale independently of the pressure of these merely temporary influences. They probably did not seriously object to the Act of Parliament of 1699, since it was in direct conformity, so far as wool was concerned, with the letter and spirit of their own statute passed in 1682. The Virginians, when they made clothing at all, made it not for shipment, but for their own use. The Colony was not sufficiently adapted to sheep husbandry at this early period to render the exportation of wool very profitable, and there was no prospect of its becoming a seat of woollen manufactures beyond the point of supplying the needs of its own plantations. As early as 1700, it had grown to be the habit of the people to mix cotton, linen, and wool in the manufacture of coarse garments for the use of their negroes and white servants, but although this form of manufacture was carried to such a point of development by 1710 that one county alone in that year produced forty thousand yards of woollen, cotton, and linen cloth, nevertheless, it was expressly stated by Spotswood that this manufacture had sprung from necessity rather than from inclination; that the people gave little promise of attaining to skill in it; and that the clothing obtained in this manner really cost more than that which was imported when tobacco was commanding a high price.

While the amount of clothing manufactured in the households of the planters was always diminished by any advance in the value of tobacco, since their ability to buy English goods of this character was thereby increased, there is no reason to think that in any year or series of years, however prosperous, the manufacture of woollen garments for rough domestic use fell into abeyance. From