emanded by their descendants of a period
that boasts itself the age of iron, and has as little as possible
to do with wood. And if we place in the hands of the patriarchs the
ancestral axes, and tell them to get out charcoal for three millions
of tons of iron, to be hauled an average of a hundred miles to
market by oxen over roads whose highest type was the corduroy, the
imagination reels at the helplessness of the heroes.

[Illustration: GRAIN ELEVATOR.]

The paternal thoughtfulness of the home government employed itself in
relieving the colonist from such exhausting drafts upon his energies.
It sedulously prohibited his throwing himself away on the manufacture
of iron or anything else. In 1750 it placed him under a penalty of
L200 for erecting a rolling-mill, tilt-hammer or steel-furnace. Lest
the governor of the colony should fail to enforce this statute
and protect the pioneer from such a waste of time, it held that
functionary to a personal forfeit of L500 for failing, within thirty
days after presentment by two witnesses on oath, to abate as a
nuisance every such mill, engine, etc. As this mulct would have made a
serious inroad on the emoluments of the royal governors, even with the
addition of the inaugural douceur customarily given by the provincial
assemblies to each new incumbent--in Virginia regularly L500, doubled
in the instance of Fauquier in 1758, when it was desired to drive
the entering wedge of disestablishment and razee the parsons--we are
prepared to believe that the iron business was not flourishing. Under
a despotism tempered so very moderately by bribes, a similar blight
fell upon all other branches of manufacture. Among these, wool, flax,
paper, hats and leather are specified in a Parliamentary report as
interfering with "the trade, navigation and manufactures" of
the mother-country. An act of Parliament accordingly forbade the
exportation of hats to foreign countries, and even from one colony to
another.

That, after such a course of repression, the country found itself
wholly unprepared on the attainment of independence to make any
headway in this field, is no matter of surprise. Thirty years elapsed
before the manufacturing statistics of the Union became presentable.
In 1810 they were reckoned at $198,613,471. This embraces every fruit
of handicraft, from a barrel of flour and a bushel of lime to a silk
dress. We had 122,647 spindles and 325,392 looms, made 53,908 tons of
pig iron, and ref