History of Worcester County, Massachusetts, embracing a comprehensive history of the county from its first settlement to the present time . owns began to set up shops andmills, and to do business on a larger scale than before. But there was littlechance ftn- manufacturing in the Colonics until after the Eovolutionary flourished, and the fisheries employed a large number of sea-fiiringmen. Boston, Salem, Gloucester, Beverly, jMarblehead, Newburyport,Charlestown, Plymouth, New Bedford, some of the Cape towns and Nan-tucket had, in the aggregate, a considcral)lc tonnage ; but the inl
History of Worcester County, Massachusetts, embracing a comprehensive history of the county from its first settlement to the present time . owns began to set up shops andmills, and to do business on a larger scale than before. But there was littlechance ftn- manufacturing in the Colonics until after the Eovolutionary flourished, and the fisheries employed a large number of sea-fiiringmen. Boston, Salem, Gloucester, Beverly, jMarblehead, Newburyport,Charlestown, Plymouth, New Bedford, some of the Cape towns and Nan-tucket had, in the aggregate, a considcral)lc tonnage ; but the inland towns hadno corresponding means of growth in population or wealth. It was the polic\of the British Government to keep down our manufiictures. Even such afriend of the Colonies as the elder Pitt said that he would not have a hat or ahob-nail made in the Colonies. The products of our fisheries, farms and mills,and the timljcr from our forests, might go to the West Indies, to Italy and toEngland, but the return must come back mainly in the products of Englishmachinery. The Revolution was the era of industrial as well as of political. I WOOL AND COTTOX. 177 independence. After that event, Ijusiness was possible, and soon diffei-ent kindsof business sprung up all over the North. In this awakening prosperity,Worcester County had its share. It felt the life and stir of the new order ofthings, and new enterprises were started in new as well as old centres ofbusiness. But there was one drawback to the increase of population. As inpreceding generations, the opening of new towns had drawn off the surplus ofpeople from the older settlements, so the Revolution was followed, for a seriesof years, by the shifting of population from ^lassachusctts to Vermont andthe Genesee country in Xcw York. Probably, not a town in WorcesterCounty escaped this cause of depletion. And the process went on, and newStates were laid open for settlement for several lustrums in the present cen-tury. The tide of
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