Can America Afford Independence?

THE OUTLOOK

Can America Afford Independence?

In declaring its independence, America has taken the first step toward nationhood. But even after the war is over, the final step of winning the peace may be the most difficult of all. Thoughtful Americans are asking themselves a hard question: Can America survive economically without Britain?

A superficial answer is: Of course. In the basic necessities, America is more self-sufficient than any European country. Advocates of independence point out that 95 percent of the more than 2.5 million Colonists are farmers, and that besides the produce they themselves grow, they can depend on an abundance of wild game and fish. The average American, unlike his counterpart in England, builds his own house--right down to finishing the nails--and he has to go no farther than his wife to obtain his clothes.

In a larger sense, however, the answer is not so easy. While individual Americans will get by, it is not certain that the American economy, lacking manufacturing, can provide the strength to launch a new nation. Even now, there, are cracks and strains. As of last week, the debt of the Continental Congress stood at 15 million dollars. Recent shortages ranged from wool for Continental Army uniforms to common salt. Without the economic link to Britain, according to some theorists, the colonies may eventually go their own ways, rather like the petty principalities of Germany.

The doubters point to these all too familiar circumstances: in the 169 years since the landing at Jamestown, Britain has done everything in its power to keep America in perpetual dependence. Guided by the principle of mercantilism, whose chief objective is the enrichment of the mother country at the expense of its colonies, Britain's leaders tried to make America serve as the Empire's farm, forest and mine, while Britain was to be its factory, financier and protector. Parliament's decrees that certain American exports could be shipped only to or through Britain cut into the profit on such products as tobacco, America's No. 1 export (102 million pounds last year). When colonial hat and wool manufacturers started to compete with English factories, Parliament likewise restricted American hat and cloth manufacturing. "The erection of manufactories in the Colonies tends to lessen their dependence on Great Britain," reads a House of Commons resolution. When America began exporting iron, Parliament prohibited the establishment of new factories in the Colonies. Only this year did the Colonists build their first new mill to make sheet iron in Trenton.

Pessimists about American independence further stress the sometimes overlooked fact that land transportation throughout the Colonies is still slow (four days by stagecoach from Boston to New York), and there is not a single bank comparable to the great financial institutions of Europe. "For what purpose were [the Colonists] suffered to go to that country unless the profit of their labor should return to their masters here?" asked the Marquis of Carmarthen in the House of Lords. Edmund Burke made the same point with more sympathy for the Colonists: "The scarcity you have felt would have been a desolating famine if this child of your old age, with a true filial piety, had not put the full breast of its youthful exuberance to the mouth of its exhausted parent."

This selfish British mercantilism has been remarkably effective in protecting and promoting British manufacturing. British exports to the Colonies have multiplied twelvefold since the beginning of this century, from -L-344 thousand to -L-4.2 million in the peak year of 1771, while American exports only tripled, to -L-1.3 million. The actual trade deficit with England was running at an annual rate of -L-1.6 million in the first half of this decade. And the American dependence was real enough, with Britain and its West Indian colonies taking most of colonial exports--tobacco, flour, fish, rice, indigo, in that order--and providing most of the Colonies' imports, mostly textiles, manufactured products and utensils from Britain, salt, sugar and molasses for rum making from the West Indies.

Despite the deficit in trade with England, however, American exports to the entire world were profitable enough in 1769 to provide a trade surplus of more than -L-200,000. When the Continental Congress opened American ports to all trade with all nations last April, it was the first opportunity for free competition in a century. Says Massachusetts Congressman John Adams: "Foreign nations, all the world I hope, will be invited to come here. And our people [will be] permitted to go to all the world except the dominion of him [King George III] who is adjudged to be Nerone Neronior [more Nero than Nero]. I think the utmost encouragement must be given to trade."

Besides enlarging their foreign markets, especially those in France, Spain and Holland, Americans may conceivably regain some direct access to Britain once the war is over. Indeed, despite the present blockade imposed by London, substantial clandestine British-American trade is going on even now. This flows mostly through Amsterdam and the West Indies, particularly the Dutch island of St. Eustatius, which is taking advantage of its unexpected role as go-between to become the busiest port in the world, with more than 250 ships arriving each week.

America has plenty to sell. American food, from salted New England cod fish and flounder to Carolina rice, is much needed in Europe and the West Indies. American shipbuilders, using cheap lumber from nearby forests, can turn out high-quality ships for 20 percent to 50 percent less than their European competitors. As a result, almost one-third of the 7,700 vessels in Britain's merchant fleet were made in the Colonies. American ironmakers, centered in Pennsylvania, New York and New Jersey, have also proved that they are as good as any in the world. Already, America produces one-seventh of the world's crude iron (30,000 tons last year). The ironmakers, like other American workmen, get wages two and three times as high as those in Europe.

In the two years since the Continental Congress began encouraging new manufacturing, a great deal has been done. Most colonies have forbidden the slaughter of lambs or sheep and the eating of mutton so that more sheep will be available for the infant wool industry --textiles having suffered from the most stringent British prohibitions. A year ago, there were no fulling mills for woolen cloth in New Jersey; now there are 41. The Virginia Convention resolved to turn "from the cultivation of tobacco to the cultivation of such articles as may form a basis for domestic manufactures, which we will endeavour to encourage to the utmost of our abilities."

Even before the current drive for economic independence, America was already heading in that direction. The first foundry for casting type for printers was set up in 1769, and only last year Benjamin Franklin brought back from France enough equipment for a complete type foundry along modern French lines. Even the pianoforte no longer has to be imported; John Behrent produced the first one in Philadelphia last year.

The obstacles to creating a true manufacturing society are still formidable, but none of them should prove insurmountable. The real question is not so much economic as political. The major manufacturing powers of Europe have long benefited from central administration and relative political stability. Both are essential ingredients of prosperity.

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