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FOUR: Political Fabric
- University of Pennsylvania Press
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chapter four Political Fabric In his 1654 history of Massachusetts, Edward Johnson boasted that the residents of Rowley ‘‘were the first people that set upon making of cloth in this Western World.’’1 Although Johnson failed to recognize Native American weaving, which utilized a variety of local materials and flourished well before European contact, his declaration’s ethnocentrism is intentional. The colonists were willing to eat maize as the natives did, but refused to dress like them. To maintain their identity, they needed to wear European cloth. Many historians have written well about the importance of fashion in creating colonial identities.2 However, in the case of Massachusetts’ identity, cloth production was arguably more important than cloth consumption or fashion —making mattered more than wearing. In order to create the cloth they needed, Massachusetts people applied the politics of reformed godly towns in England to the problem of a severe cloth shortage and the mobilization of labor. Because they succeeded, they created not just an abundance of sheep and textiles or enough self-made cloth to continue their identities as Europeans but also a new and dangerous political identity as an independent, distinctive , and equitable people within the English empire. In some sense, cloth manufacture in Massachusetts was an unsurprising development. New England immigrants came largely from textile-producing districts. Indeed, as one historian discovered, a quarter of all adult males who came to New England between 1620 and 1640 possessed specific clothmaking skills.3 Nevertheless, for about a decade, New Englanders allowed their textile skills to remain dormant. So long as Charles I and Archbishop Laud continued to dismiss Puritan ministers and interrupt urban reform 126 development movements in England’s great textile towns and districts, colonists with textile skills in America had little reason to use their cards, wheels, and looms. Each year, increasing numbers of wealthy Puritans from the English textile districts departed for New England, carrying much of their wealth in cloth. Colonists sold food and livestock to the newcomers, often in exchange for fabric. So much cloth circulated in the colony that well-paid workers’ sumptuous attire provoked special legislation to stop servants and laborers from dressing in velvet gowns and silk ribbons and parading like lords and ladies through Boston.4 Some colonial leaders, to be sure, worried about the economic as well as moral perils of exchanging English cloth for American food and livestock. Writing from London in 1636, John Winthrop’s sister Lucy Downing warned her brother that she might not emigrate because the land seemed economically unproductive and overly dependent on the newcomers’ money and fabric .5 Later that year, John White of Dorchester wrote to Winthrop about the colony’s trade imbalance, especially its overpriced cloth: ‘‘I have often heard at what hard rates necessaries, for clothing especially, have been sold amongst you for which I confess I have been much grieved as that which I am certain will consume you by degrees.’’ White urged Winthrop to create a monopoly in England for the sale of cloth among New England sympathizers in order to secure lower prices. He recommended the development of fishing to furnish a salable international commodity and insisted stricter discipline be imposed on New England’s workers, especially children. Although a resourceful and daring economic reformer, White failed to imagine the colony becoming a significant producer of European textiles.6 While a demand for cloth and textile skills existed in Massachusetts, White understood that market dynamics could not by themselves organize these assets into a viable industry. Early modern textile production was complex and extensive, involving many commodities and skilled people in intricate networks. New England lacked many of the essential ingredients of the English industry, including capital and a strong medium of exchange. Most important, New England lacked a surplus labor pool. In England, textile producers or clothiers employed skilled smallholders and landless men and women to produce goods profitably. Economic necessity made these workers willing, obedient, and cheap.7 In New England, by contrast, the potential laborers or their households had land, and there were relatively few workers for all there was to do. Women and children might spin and tend sheep, but they were scattered under the rule of individual fathers and husbands, and [3.89.163.120] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 03:05 GMT) Political Fabric 127 the English did not customarily overwork children. How could women and children be mobilized, if the household was the major economic and political unit, if...