A History of the American People

inches taller than their British counterparts. They ate good dairy food too. By 1750 a typical
Connecticut farm owned ten head of cattle, sixteen sheep, six pigs, two horses, a team of oxen. In
addition the farm grew maize, wheat, and rye, and two-fifths of the produce went on earning a
cash income, spent on British imports or, increasingly, locally produced goods. It is true that
widows might fall into poverty. But only 3 to 5 percent of middle-aged white males were poor.
One-third of adult white males held no appreciable property, but these were under thirty. It was
easy to acquire land. Over the course of a lifecycle, any male who survived to be forty could
expect to live in a household of median income and capital wealth. In short by the third quarter
of the 18th century America already had a society which was predominantly middle class. The
shortage of labor meant artisans did not need to form guilds to protect jobs. It was rare to find
restriction on entry to any trade. Few skilled men remained hired employees beyond the age of
twenty-five. If they did not acquire their own farm they ran their own business. In practice there
were no real class barriers. A middle-aged artisan usually had the vote and many were elected to
office at town and county level. These successful middle-aged men were drawn not just from the
descendants of earlier settlers or from the ranks of the free immigrants but from the 500,000
white Europeans who, during the colonial period, came to America on non-free service contracts
running from four to seven years. White servitude, unlike black slavery, was an almost
unqualified success in America.
The policy, begun in 1717, of transporting convicts to the American mainland, for seven years
as a rule, worked less well-far less well than it later did in Australia. This was subsidized by the
British state, which wanted to get rid of the rogues, but was also a private business tied to the
shipping trade. The convicts left Britain in the spring, were landed in Philadelphia or the
Chesapeake in the summer, and the ships which transported them returned in the autumn loaded
with tobacco, corn, and wheat. In half a century, 1717-67, 10,000 serious criminals were dumped
on Maryland alone. They arrived chained in groups of ninety or more, looking and smelling like
nothing on earth. Marginal planters regarded them as a good buy, especially if they had skills.
They went into heavy labor-farming, digging, shipbuilding, the main Baltimore ironworks, for
instance. In 1755 in Baltimore, one adult male worker in ten was a convict from Britain. They
were much more troublesome than non-criminal indentured labor, always complaining of abuses
and demanding rights.' People hated and feared them. Many were alcoholics or suicidal. Others had missing ears and fingers or gruesome scars. Some did well-one ex-thief qualified as a doctor and practiced successfully in Baltimore, attracting what he called 'bisness a nuf for 2.' But there were much talked-about horror-stories-one convict went mad in 1751 and attacked his master's children with an axe; another cut off his hand rather than work. From Virginia, William Byrd II wrote loftily to an English friend:I wish you would be so kind as to hang all your felons at
home. There were public demands that a head-tax be imposed on each convict landed or that
purchasers be forced to post bonds for their good behavior. But the British authorities would
never have allowed this. As a result of the convict influx we hear for the first time in America
widespread complaints that crime was increasing and that standards of behavior had deteriorated.
All this was blamed on Britain.
Indeed the historian notes with a certain wry amusement, as the century progressed, an
American tendency to attribute everything good in their lives to their country and their own
efforts, and to attribute anything which went wrong to Britain. Certainly, America showered
blessings on its people, as English newcomers noticed. One visitor said that 'Hoggs in America
feed better than Hyde Park duchesses in England.' Another called the country `a place of Full
Tables and Open Doors.' Miss Eliza Lucas, much traveled daughter of an English army officer,