of the open field, developed in the course of time a national industry
which was almost exclusively their own. Wool and flax were raised in
abundance in the North and South. "Every farm house," says Coman, the
economic historian, "was a workshop where the women spun and wove the
serges, kerseys, and linsey-woolseys which served for the common wear."
By the close of the seventeenth century, New England manufactured cloth
in sufficient quantities to export it to the Southern colonies and to
the West Indies. As the industry developed, mills were erected for the
more difficult process of dyeing, weaving, and fulling, but carding and
spinning continued to be done in the home. The Dutch of New Netherland,
the Swedes of Delaware, and the Scotch-Irish of the interior "were not
one whit behind their Yankee neighbors."

The importance of this enterprise to British economic life can hardly be
overestimated. For many a century the English had employed their fine
woolen cloth as the chief staple in a lucrative foreign trade, and the
government had come to look upon it as an object of special interest and
protection. When the colonies were established, both merchants and
statesmen naturally expected to maintain a monopoly of increasing value;
but before long the Americans, instead of buying cloth, especially of
the coarser varieties, were making it to sell. In the place of
customers, here were rivals. In the place of helpless reliance upon
English markets, here was the germ of economic independence.

If British merchants had not discovered it in the ordinary course of
trade, observant officers in the provinces would have conveyed the news
to them. Even in the early years of the eighteenth century the royal
governor of New York wrote of the industrious Americans to his home
government: "The consequence will be that if they can clothe themselves
once, not only comfortably, but handsomely too, without the help of