298 THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONSmanufactures, using wool and linen of their own raising."^7
New England and the middle colonies of Pennsylvania and New
Jersey became the "industrial heartlands" of the new nation. Iron-
making got its start in the 1640s (bog iron on the Saugus [at Lynn]
in Massachusetts), only two decades after the Pilgrims' landing at
Plymouth.^8 By the time of the revolution (1770s), some two hundred
iron forges were in operation in Britain's American colonies, and the
annual make was some 30,000 tons. Only Britain, France, Sweden, and
Russia made more. Along with smelting went refining, hammering,
cutting, slitting, rolling, and the sundry other operations that turn
iron into tools and objects. Inevitably, the demand for British metal
lurgical products fell sharply, leading British manufacturers to petition
Parliament for laws prohibiting colonial manufacture. As much com
mand the tides. Such laws only sensitized the colonists to the injustice
of their subordinate status and of government without representation;
also to the importance of economic autonomy. As Benjamin Rush,
doctor and civic leader in Pennsylvania, put it in 1775: "A people who
are dependent on foreigners for food or clothes must always be subject
to them."^9
One focus of colonial industry was to cost the British dear. The
colonials made guns—muskets to begin with, and increasingly rifles,
which along with hunting from childhood, gave them a substantial
edge in marksmanship, an edge that would persist into the twentieth
century. Guns had their particular virtues in a frontier society, to the
point where some of the colonies imposed an obligation to bear arms,
even to church. (Again, one has here a strong and persistent cultural
characteristic, as witness the present-day opposition to gun control.)
Demand, however, did not assure supply. Culture matters. The peo
ple of the South and of backwoods Appalachia went more heavily
armed, but the guns were made in the northern colonies. The reason
was simple: that was where the skills and tools were. By the time the
South went to war against the Union in 1861, firearms production in
the North outweighed that in the Confederacy by 32 to l.^10
One sees in these early gunshops a hint of things to come: so great
was the demand for weapons that long before powered machine tools
became available, division of labor was enhancing productivity. The
later interest of the young American republic in the mass production
of small arms using interchangeable parts was anticipated well before
the revolution.
Thus the colonists imported and copied models of European devices
and machines, and skilled machinists and craftsmen were invited, or