The original 13 colonies were a second-rate source of furs by the late colonial period, because the finest furs along the seaboard were processed quickly and the most lucrative catches were made long before the frontier moved into the interior (Bridenbaugh 1971). It was the French, with their strong trade connections to Native Americans (who did most of the trapping), not the English, who were the principal furriers in North America (see Perspective 3.1 on page 52). Nonetheless, farmers trapped furs as a sideline to obtain cash, although they caught primarily muskrats and raccoons, whose pelts were less desirable then, as now.
The forest itself, more than its denizens, became an economically significant object of exploitation. The colonials lived in an age of wood. Wood, rather than minerals and metals, was the chief fuel and the basic construction material. Almost without exception, the agricultural population engaged in some form of lumbering. Pioneers had to fell trees to clear ground, and used wood to build houses, barns, furniture, and sometimes fences. Frequently, they burned the timber and scattered the ashes, but enterprising farmers eventually discovered that they could use simple equipment to produce potash and the more highly refined pearlash. These chemicals were needed to manufacture glass, soap, and other products and provided cash earnings to many households throughout the colonies.
From the forests also came the wood and naval stores for ships and ship repair. White pine was unmatched as a building material for the masts and yards of sailing ships, and white and red oak provided ship timbers (for ribbing) of the same high quality. The pine trees that grew abundantly throughout the colonies furnished the raw material for the manufacture of naval stores: pitch, tar, and resin. In the days of wooden vessels, naval stores were indispensable in the shipyard and were used mostly for protecting surfaces and caulking seams. These materials were in great demand in both the domestic and British shipbuilding industries. Considerable skilled labor was required to produce naval stores, and only in North Carolina, where slaves were specially trained to perform the required tasks, were these materials produced profitably without British subsidy.
AMERICAN INDIAN HUNTERS AND THE DEPLETION OF THE BEAVER
Early forms of territorial hunting rights (property rights) among North American tribes sustained stocks of game, because hunters, especially in forested areas, had incentives (Economic Reasoning Proposition 3, incentives matter) to limit their takings. In forested areas, game generally remained in a fixed area, so tribes or groups established rules, giving hunting areas to particular tribes or groups. Only in the case of exceptional circumstances, such as famine, fire, or the like, would hunters from another tribe be allowed to hunt in another’s territory. When the English-owned Hudson Bay Company was established early in the seventeenth century, its demand for beaver furs for the markets of England and Europe encouraged Indian hunters to harvest larger quantities of beaver pelts. The French, along with the Hudson Bay Company, competed to set prices for furs and for axes, cloth, and other manufactures exchanged for the furs.
When the French entered the market in competition with the English, fur prices moved upward, encouraging more intensive hunting. Figures 3.1 and 3.2 show an index of prices at two major English trading forts, 1700 to 1763, and regional beaver population estimates. Greater competition alone did not deplete the beaver population, which, though declining, remained above self-sustaining levels.
The maximum sustained yield (the horizontal Pmsy line in the figures) indicates the amounts that could be taken consistent with the forest habitat being able to sustain the population. In the 1720s and 1730s, this maximum yield, just consistent with a sustained beaver population, was maintained, as shown in Figures 3.1 and 3.2. In the 1740s, however, a rise in demand and prices for furs in Europe plus greater competition between the French posts and England’s Hudson Bay Company forts, combined to deplete the stock. Higher prices encouraged greater takings and overharvesting (Economic Reasoning Proposition 3, incentives matter), and because of increasing tribal migrations and dislocations, the Native American groups were unable to generate communally based or closed-access property rights systems.
The tragedy of the commons arose with all its negative consequences. Intense and growing competition in the absence of appropriate property rights fails (Economic Reasoning Proposition 4, institutions matter). By the late colonial period, the colonies contained few beavers, and even farther west the beaver population was moving toward extinction.
(For more analysis, see Carlos and Lewis 1999.)
Quantities
Price relatives
FIGURE 3.1
Fur Prices and Simulated Beaver Population: York Factory, 1716-1763
Source: Carlos and Lewis 1999.
Quantities Price relatives Fur Prices and Simulated Beaver Population: Fort Albany, 1700-1763
AMERICAN INDIAN HUNTERS AND THE DEPLETION OF THE BEAVER, Continued
Quantities
Price relatives 130
Source: Carlos and Lewis 1999.
The only mineral obtained by the colonials in any significant quantity was raw iron. The methods used in the colonial iron industry did not differ greatly from those developed in the late Middle Ages, although by the time of the Revolution, furnace sizes had increased greatly. In the seventeenth century, the chief source of iron was bog ore, a sediment taken from swamps and ponds. When this sediment was treated with charcoal in a bloomery or forge until the charcoal absorbed the oxygen in the ore, an incandescent sponge of metal resulted. The glowing ball of iron was removed from the forge and in a white-hot condition was hammered to remove the slag and leave a substantial piece of wrought iron.
Rich rock ores were discovered as the population moved inward, and during the eighteenth century, a large number of furnaces were built for the reduction of these ores. Pig iron could then be produced in quantity. A mixture of rock ore, charcoal, and oyster shells or limestone was placed in a square or conical furnace and then ignited. Under a draft of air from bellows worked by water power, the iron ore was reduced to a spongy metal, which as it settled to the bottom of the furnace alloyed itself with large amounts of carbon, thereby becoming what we call “cast iron.” Poured into molds called “pigs” or “sows,” the resulting metal could be either remelted and cast into final form later or further refined and reworked in a mill or blacksmith shop. The discussion of these rudimentary processes provides an important background that will help us understand the later development in the American iron and steel industry.
Because of the simple processing required and an abundance of charcoal, the colonial iron industry was able to compete with that of the British Isles in the sale of bars and pigs. The number of forges and furnaces in the colonies just before the Revolution probably exceeded the number in England and Wales combined, and the annual output of wrought and cast iron by then was about 30,000 tons, or one-seventh of the world’s output. But the colonies remained heavy net importers of finished iron products.
World History
