comparison, however, requires some qualification. The farmer and
the farmer's wife and children performed many tasks which are now
done in factories. The successful farmer on the frontier had to
be a jack of many trades. Often he tanned leather and made shoes
for his family and harness for his horses. He was carpenter,
blacksmith, cobbler, and often boat-builder and fisherman as
well. His wife made soap and candles, spun yarn and dyed it, wove
cloth and made the clothes the family wore, to mention only a few
of the tasks of the women of the eighteenth century.

The organization of industry, however, was beginning. Here and
there were small paper mills, glass factories-though many houses
in the back country were without glass windows--potteries, and
iron foundries and forges. Capitalists, in some places, had
brought together a few handloom weavers to make cloth for sale,
and the famous shoemakers of Massachusetts commonly worked in
groups.

The mineral resources of the United States were practically
unknown. The country seems to have produced iron enough for its
simple needs, some coal, copper, lead, gold, silver, and sulphur.
But we may say that mining was hardly practiced at all.

The fisheries and the shipyards were great sources of wealth,
especially for New England. The cod fishers numbered several
hundred vessels and the whalers about forty. Thousands of
citizens living along the seashore and the rivers fished more or
less to add to the local food supply. The deep-sea fishermen
exported a part of their catch, dried and salted. Yankee vessels
sailed to all ports of the world and carried the greater part of