authorities in London that people who could clothe themselves handsomely without the help of England would soon begin to think of ruling themselves without her supervision. Economically not so important but artistically not a whit behind the woolen industry was the manufacture of fine linens by thrifty housewives; the samples of their work that have come down to us bear witness to their prowess at the wheel and loom.
Into other industrial fields, the enterprising colonials also ventured with signal success. At shops scattered far and wide, hats of no mean style and finish were turned out for local trade and even for export to distant settlements. Skillful weavers at Germantown supplied thread stockings by the thousand dozen at a dollar a pair. Saffron books of colonial merchants tell us of rope, starch, candles, earthenware, leather goods, shirtings, sheeting, duck, glass, refined sugar, and paper made by American labor in increasing quantities, pressing hard upon English imports in many markets and giving promise of indefinite expansion under favorable conditions.
Also in the iron industry—that very basis of modern imperial power—did American enterprise show signs of future greatness. In almost every colony beds of ore were discovered and, as soon as the first days of settlement were over, forges appeared along the rivers of New England, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. The ways of the ironmakers can be illustrated in the progress of Abraham Lincoln's forebears. The third son of the first Lincoln, who came to Massachusetts in 1637, built a forge on the banks of a neighboring brook and prospered; other descendants carried that industry into New Jersey; and a hundred years later Lincolns were engaged in Tubal Cain's art on the Schuylkill in Pennsylvania. With individual initiative, corporate enterprise was combined: a mining company was organized at Simsbury, Connecticut, in 1709.
Whether working for companies or on their own account, most of the masters were content to turn out bar iron for
