Alpha Book

[Sidenote: Great Growth of Commerce]
Customs and companies may have been injurious in many respects, but
commerce grew out of all bounds. The New World gave furs, timber,
tobacco, cotton, rice, sugar, rum, molasses, coffee, dyes, gold, and
silver, in return for negro slaves, manufactures, and Oriental wares;
and the broad Atlantic highways were traversed by many hundreds of
heavily laden ships. The spices, jewels, tea, and textiles of the Far
East made rich cargoes for well-built East Indiamen. Important, too,
was the traffic which occupied English and Dutch merchant fleets in the
Baltic; and the flags of many nations were carried by traders coastwise
along all the shores of Europe. Great Britain at the opening of the
eighteenth century possessed a foreign commerce estimated at
$60,000,000, and that of France was at least two-thirds as great.
During the century the volume of commerce was probably more than
quadrupled.
It is difficult to realize the tremendous importance of this expansion
of commerce and industry.


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