Page:Southern Antiques - Burroughs - 1931.djvu/35

Rh  agents, as has been pointed out, for disposals of such funds as were placed in their hands as a result of the sale of their tobacco, cotton and rice, in plate and silver, china, glass, rugs and furniture when occasion demanded.

Importers, too, brought in rich goods. Especially in Maryland, do we find them listed as doing particularly good business. Stephen West, of Maryland, lists at one time, as from London, "household and kitchen furniture of the very best kinds. Beds and furniture, screens, mahogany chairs, tables of all sizes, card tables, tea tables, elbow chairs, tea boards, dressing tables, carpets, looking-glasses, pewter dishes," and other things, "all to be sold very cheap." (1752).

Furniture, too, was brought South from the North. The ship, Sea Nymph, of London, in 1739, according to the Gazette from New England, coming into the York with one dozen desks and one dozen tables along with ballast. Drawers, fine desks, and other things came aboard the sloop, Ruth, of Rhode Island, the same year.

With factors from English merchants in almost every port, inducements offered, and the buying of foreign stuff made easy, competition must have been difficult. "Any person," declared one of the traders in 1731, in the Virginia Gazette, "who is inclinable to deal for a Parcel of Goods at the Value of Three or Four Hundred pounds may be supply'd Cheap for Tobacco, to be paid Time enough to be Sent back Home by this year's ship." But the local craftsman, undaunted, worked on, not without inducements of his own to offer, and his argument that home-produced furniture could be secured at less price and in less time, was a sound one. In marked confidence as to the excellence of his work, he boasted outright that he was not to be outdone.

Then, too, there was an ebb as well as a flow in the tide of importation, particularly as the colonists reacted in resentment to the Stamp Act, and the further injustices put upon them following its repeal in 1766. When the next year, a new tax was put on tea, glass, papers, and painters' material, and the Townsend Act followed, imposing other duties on tea and glass, sugar, lead, and paper, the wrath of the colonists further overflowed. Charles Carroll, of Maryland, in 1768, in high feather, made his wrath plain to an English friend, informing him by letter, of his confidence in the ability of American craftsmen to produce for the colonists anything which at that time they were buying from England, which they might choose to shut off.

"Every duty you send us Operates Apparently as Bounty and Encouragement to us to manufacture tht species of goods." American linens and woolens had received a great boost on the passing of the Stamp Act. "Surprising & astonishing was ye progress in Manufacture Here Especially in the Woolen & Linnen Branches," he told him. "The repeal of the Act gave a great check to thm. But. But [sic] they are reassured not with a noisy & ostentatious Parade, But wth a sullen Resentment & determined Resolution never more to abandon thm." As for Gentleman Carroll, at the time of the first excitement he had manufactured "a Suite of Cloathes" for himself. "I wore