Page:The Rise of American Civilization (Volume 1).djvu/106

 enemies, their friends, their mothers, fathers, wives, daughters, and sons for New England's scalding potion. The unhappy victims of this traffic, huddled in the low spaces made vacant by the removal of hogsheads, were taken to the West Indies to raise more sugar or to the plantations of the Southern colonies to toil in the rice and tobacco fields.

From the profits of this exchange came the fortunes of great families and the prosperity of whole communities. When, therefore, the English government sought to favor the plantations of the English West Indies at the expense of the neighboring islands belonging to France, by taxing the sugar of the latter, the action struck deep into the interests of New England manufacturers as well as the business of carriers whose sails were spread under many skies.

Next in importance to the fisheries and the various branches of enterprise connected with them was the general carrying trade, which employed thousands of American ships. First of all, in this relation, was the coastwise traffic—in itself enormous. Since the roads uniting the colonies were few in number and well-nigh impassable for stagecoaches or wagons during a large part of the year, the sea and the rivers had to furnish a substitute. Hence, a regular freight and passenger service sprang up along the shore, permitting the merchants of Boston, Baltimore, Charleston, or New York to set sail for a distant American port almost any day in the week.

Another branch of the sea trade was the transport of the produce of farms and plantations to the West Indies and to Europe and the carriage of manufactures home on the return voyage. As an old writer remarked, the Yankees gave "unremitting attention to the most minute article which could be made to yield a profit" and "obtained for themselves the appellation of the Dutchmen of America." Did the burghers of Holland want sugar for their tea? Americans brought it swiftly from the West Indies and sold it for a bill of exchange on London. Did Spanish