"A Barrel Tapped at Both Ends": New Jersey and Economic Development

New Jersey has suffered an identity crisis since 1664, when James, the Duke of York, grasped it from the Dutch. Instead of keeping the colony as his own—as in the case of New York—he divided it into two, giving the eastern part to Sir George Carteret and the western part to John Lord Berkeley. The division made some sense, for each part bounded a major river valley, the Hudson on the east and the Delaware on the west. Unfortunately for New Jersey’s commercial growth, both halves failed to develop major entrepôts, instead becoming incorporated into the hinterlands of New York and Philadelphia. With unification under royal government in 1702, New Jersey became a single political entity, yet remained divided socially and economically, in words usually credited to Benjamin Franklin, “a barrel tapped at both ends” (p. 44).

The difficulty of studying historical geography and economic history within prescribed political boundaries becomes clear in this volume by Peter O. Wacker and Paul G. E. Clemens, even for those of us who appreciate the state as more than “the turnpike.” Wacker, a professor of geography, and Clemens, a professor of history, both at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, collaborated loosely in producing this investigation of how European settlers exploited the land. As Wacker explains in his preface, he originally intended to do a sequel to his first book, Land and People: A Cultural Geography of Preindustrial New Jersey: Origins and Settlement Patterns (1975), but became so focused on land use that he sought publication for this part of the larger project. His publisher agreed, but suggested that Paul Clemens contribute two historical essays. While this is an excellent strategy in bringing together the varied disciplinary skills and perspectives of these respected scholars, the result is less integrated than one would expect, even from a co-authored book. The volume has a wealth of new data and many important insights, yet in the end the reader is forced to make connections between each author’s work. This arises in part from the problem of investigating economic history/ historical geography within political boundaries rather than taking a regional approach, in part from the structure of the book.

Both authors address ideas raised by James T. Lemon in his influential The Best Poor Man’s Country: A Geographical Study of Early Southeastern Pennsylvania (1972), which investigated the impact of ethnic backgrounds and the market on economic development and agricultural practices in Chester and Lancaster counties, across the Delaware River from western New Jersey. Clemens, in the first of two very good essays, uses the records of three New Jerseyans to evaluate the ongoing debate about the degree to which early American farmers were market oriented. In The Best Poor Man’s Country, Lemon characterized early Pennsylvanians as “perhaps the most liberal people in the world,” people whose economic success encouraged emphasis on individual gain over communal needs (Lemon, pp. 218–19). James A. Henretta emphatically rejected this claim in his article, “Families and Farms: Mentalité in Pre-Industrial America.” ¹ Drawing upon the work of Daniel Vickers, Bettye Hobbs Pruitt, ² and others, Clemens suggests that “the intriguing question is not the ‘either/or’ proposition about market and community but understanding the way market relationships are embedded in community life” (pp. 3–4). He analyzes the farm diaries of Erkuries Beatty of Princeton and Betsey Mulford Crane of the Passaic Valley and the farm ledger and cash books of James Ten Eyck of North Branch to demonstrate how these New Jerseyans of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, all living in the vicinity of market towns, combined an awareness of the market and efforts to improve production with more traditional practices and perspectives.

Erkuries Beatty may serve as an example. The owner of a 141-acre farm, he produced for the market but apparently did not specialize...