inconsistent with the interests of the Mother State must be understood be illegal and the practice of
them unwarrantable, because they contradict the end to which the colony has a being and are
incompatible with the terms on which the people claim both privileges and protection ... for such is
the end of colonies, and if this use cannot be made of them it is much better for the state to do
without them.This was hard doctrine, manifestly unjust and equally clearly unenforceable. There were of
course many legislative efforts to turn it into reality. An Act of 1699 forbade the colonies to ship
wool, woolen yarn, or cloth. Another in 1732 vetoed hats. An Act of 1750 admitted entry of bar-
iron into England but banned slitting or rolling mills, plat-force, or steel furnaces. But iron
casting was not specifically forbidden and so the colonies produced such things as kettles, salt-
pans, and kitchen utensils, as well as cannon. According to Board of Trade economic doctrine
these must be inherently unlawful. But they continued to be made. And what about shipbuilding?
The sea was Britain's lifeblood and ships were made, competitively, in yards all over England
and Scotland. But with wood so cheap and accessible, America had a huge competitive
advantage in shipbuilding before the age of iron and steam. By mid-century New England yards
were turning out ships at an average cost of $34 a ton, 20 to 50 percent cheaper than in Europe.
They had vigorously promoted shipbuilding from the 1640s and as early as 1676 were turning
out thirty a year for the English market alone; this rose to 300 to 400 a year by 1760. By this time
fully a third of the British merchant fleet of 398,000 tons was American-built, and the colonies
were turning out a further 15,000 tons a year. The reason for permitting this obvious anomaly
was the British need for cheap timber. A British merchant could sail his ship to Boston, sell his
cargo, then with the proceeds build an additional ship, and load both with timber. The British
authorities unwittingly encouraged this procedure, paying substantial bounties on timber-related
products such as pitch, tar, rosin, turps and water-rotted hemp, to reduce its dependence on
supplies from the Continent.
This cheapness of wood, and so of ships, also encouraged the development of an enormous
fishing fleet which again, strictly speaking, was a challenge to British interests. As early as 1641
figures show that New England was exporting 300,000 cod a year plus halibut, mackerel, and
herring. By 1675, 4,000 men and 600 ships were involved in the industry. By 1770 its exports
were worth $225,000 a year. The largest and most difficult-to-cure fish were eaten locally; small,
damaged, or tainted fish were sent to the West Indies to be eaten by slaves; the best smaller fish
were cured and sent to Britain. All this stimulated a large cooperage industry, again encouraged
by cheap wood-New England farmers often increased their incomes by turning out barrels on the
side. As New England made bigger and better ships, it went into worldwide deep-sea whaling,
already important by 1700 and growing rapidly. For its own mysterious reasons the home
government again favored this activity, paying a pound bounty per ton (1732) on whalers of 200
tons of more, and raising it (1747) to 2 pounds a ton. By midcentury America had the most
skillful whalers in the world, 4,000 of them from New Bedford and Provincetown, Nantucket
and Marblehead, operating over 300 ships.
The fact is, though America's was largely an agricultural economy, far more so than Britain's,
it was stealthily catching up in manufactures of all sorts. When the Board of Trade wrote to
colonial governors, asking for figures of goods produced locally, the governors, with their eye on
local opinion, deliberately underestimated output. A lot of phony statistics passed across the
Atlantic in the 18th century-not for the last time, either. Comptroller Weare wrote anxiously to
the Board of Trade c.1750: `The Planters throughout all New England, New York, the Jersies,
Pennsylvania and Maryland (for south of that province no knowledge is here pretended) almost