# US economy in 1776 ? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [March 8, 2018, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264 "2018-03-08T21:59:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 19\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2018, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/1 "2018-03-08T21:59:54Z")
I was wondering how most people made a living in 1776 in the US. I know a lot of people were farmers. Did a lot of people not have a steady job and simply grew their own food and made their own house and clothes and other things needed? Of course farmers could also sell their crops or animals to get money to buy clothes, etc. ---
**Author:** ![PoppaSan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/poppasan/32/189_2.png) [@PoppaSan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoppaSan)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/2 "2018-03-09T02:49:22Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > I was wondering how most people made a living in 1776 in the US. I know a lot of people were farmers. Did a lot of people not have a steady job and simply grew their own food and made their own house and clothes and other things needed? > > Of course farmers could also sell their crops or animals to get money to buy clothes, etc. Farming IS a steady job, even today. Most earned pocket change by selling their excess. It’s not like the tea merchant’s clerk or the blacksmith had a plot to grow wheat. Somebody provided the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker with raw supplies. ---
**Author:** ![UDS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecae2f/32.png) [@UDS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UDS)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/3 "2018-03-09T04:02:21Z")
“Subsistence farming” (where the farmer and his family produce most of what they consume, and consume most of what they produce, with a relatively modest surplus left for trading) was the dominant model of farming in the Northern colonies. Likewise there was a good deal of domestic handicraft production, mostly for immediate consumption but with a surplus for sale. But in the Southern colonies - then, the economically dominant part of the nascent US - they had plantation agriculture, with tobacco, indigo, rice and (later) cotton being produced on a large scale, mainly to be traded. In both parts there were industries associated with agriculture - milling of grain, baking, butchery, weaving, etc, all of which used agricultural produce, and also industries like potash production (for fertiliser), blacksmithing, etc. There was a timber industry, and a shipbuilding industry which made use of the produce of the timber industry. Shipbuilding was in fact the largest industry after agriculture. And of course there was shipping, whaling and fishing. There was a limited manufacturing sector. Most finished goods were imported from the UK. Legal restrictions, monopolies, etc, constrained the growth of the manufacturing sector, and this of course was one of the proximate causes of the American revolution. The total population of the 13 colonies is thought to have been about 2.5 million, of whom about 20% were slaves. The slaves, of course, excepted, the average standard of living was probably somewhat higher than in Britain. There was no class of poor, landless agricultural labourers (the slaves filled this role) and the colonies had a persistent labour shortage which kept wages relatively high. ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/4 "2018-03-09T13:28:30Z")
This promises to be an interesting thread. I would be very interested in seeing %s of folk involved in the various sectors of the economy. What was the percentage of population that was urban vs rural? And where do you fit folk like Franklin (printer? postmaster?) Washington (surveyor?), Jefferson (landed gentry?), Hamilton (rich MF?)? ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/5 "2018-03-09T14:36:08Z")
I watched the excellent John Adams miniseries recently and one thing I didn’t get is who was doing all his farming? Adams owned a farm and was proud of it, even if he considered himself a lawyer and politician first. There are scenes of his wife and children tending to the farm, but it looks like they’re mostly gardening. He didn’t have slaves. So who was plowing the fields and harvesting his crops? Hired laborers? Was this a common setup? Rich guy owns a farm but works in the city and hires someone else to tend to his farm? Or has his wife and kids do all the work? ---
**Author:** ![zimaane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a3d4f5/32.png) [@zimaane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zimaane)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/6 "2018-03-09T14:36:53Z")
I’ve heard it said that the average free person in the American colonies had a better standard of living that the average English nobleman, in terms of food consumption and life expectancy. The great majority of the populace would have been farmers. People like the founding fathers were the 1 percenters of their day. (Hamilton was a successful lawyer, but not vastly wealthy.) ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/7 "2018-03-09T14:55:14Z")
Washington had a very big farm and he also made whiskey ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/8 "2018-03-09T16:27:50Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > There was no class of poor, landless agricultural labourers (the slaves filled this role) and the colonies had a persistent labour shortage which kept wages relatively high. Not exactly. The Scots-Irish (aka the Ulster Scots) came over poor and moved west until the gentry quit chasing them away – i.e., Appalachia. Mostly they were squatters, at least until the surveyors came around to title it “their” land. > [@Dinsdale](#): > > And where do you fit folk like Franklin (printer? postmaster?) Washington (surveyor?), Jefferson (landed gentry?), Hamilton (rich MF?)? Franklin was a city kid, born in Boston then left for Philadelphia. He apprenticed as a printer, then found a partner to back him and opened his own shop. Washington an Jefferson both came from the landed gentry. Washington’s career was detoured because he was the youngest and didn’t inherit, so he commanded a militia unit and eventually married a rich widow. Hamilton came from much poorer stock, and worked as a clerk until joining the military and ending up on washington’s staff. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/9 "2018-03-09T17:30:09Z")
The first statistics I could find are from 1820. It says there were 2,880,000 workers in the US. Of those 2,070,000 were agricultural workers(72%), 350,00 were manufacturing workers (12%), and 460,000 were unclassified (16%). Farmers working their own land would not have been classified as workers but a little speculative math would put this number as around 1.5-2 million. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/10 "2018-03-09T17:39:06Z")
> [@Dinsdale](#): > > What was the percentage of population that was urban vs rural? America was overwhelmingly rural in 1776. It was a farming country with a handful of small cities. Philadelphia, which was the largest American city in 1776, had a population of around forty thousand. It was followed by New York (25,000), Boston (15,000), Charleston (12,000), and Newport (11,000). That was a problem the British faced during the war; there were no obvious central targets for them to attack and conquer. They occupied all of the above cities at some point during the war but it didn’t have a significant effect on American morale or economic life. ---
**Author:** ![Slash1972](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slash1972/32/6461_2.png) [@Slash1972](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slash1972)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/11 "2018-03-09T17:59:13Z")
> [@puddleglum](#): > > The first statistics I could find are from 1820. It says there were 2,880,000 workers in the US. Of those 2,070,000 were agricultural workers(72%), 350,00 were manufacturing workers (12%), and 460,000 were unclassified (16%). Farmers working their own land would not have been classified as workers but a little speculative math would put this number as around 1.5-2 million. Does the unclassified include doctors and lawyers and such? ---
**Author:** ![Dinsdale](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/97f17d/32.png) [@Dinsdale](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dinsdale)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/12 "2018-03-09T19:02:06Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > Franklin was a city kid, born in Boston then left for Philadelphia. He apprenticed as a printer, then found a partner to back him and opened his own shop. Washington an Jefferson both came from the landed gentry. Washington’s career was detoured because he was the youngest and didn’t inherit, so he commanded a militia unit and eventually married a rich widow. Hamilton came from much poorer stock, and worked as a clerk until joining the military and ending up on washington’s staff. First, I mirswrote Hamilton, when I intended Hancock. I guess my question was what percentage of the populations were “city kid/printers”, landed gentry, wealthy business owners, etc ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/13 "2018-03-09T21:15:17Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Washington had a very big farm and he also made whiskey > [@](#): > > Kyle: George toked weed, man? > Slater: Absolutely George toked weed, are you kiddin’ me, man? He grew fields of that stuff, man, that’s what I’m talkin’ about. Fields. > Kyle: He grew that shit up Mount Vernon, man. > Slater: Mount Vernon, man? He grew it all over the country, man. He had people growin’ it all over the country, you know. The whole country back then was gettin’ high. Lemme tell you, man, ‘cause he knew he was onto somethin’, man. He knew that it would be a good cash crop for the southern states, man, so he grew fields of it, man. But you know what? Behind every good man there’s a woman, and that woman was Martha Washington, man, and every day, George would come home, she’d have a big fat bowl waiting for him, man, when he’d come in the door. She was a hip, a hip, hip lady, man. – Dazed and Confused ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 9, 2018, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/14 "2018-03-09T21:40:46Z")
Remember, the thing that triggered urbanization was the green revolution trend that allowed a smaller group of farmers to produce enough food for a larger urban population. IIRC we start to see the increase in automation and higher agricultural efficiency by the mid-1800’s. Perhaps the first part of that trend was around 1800, with canal networks (Erie canal and the US river systems) making bulk transport easier; followed by railroads making bulk transport even simpler. A barge or train can move a lot more, a lot more cheaply and faster than a guy with a cart and a pair of oxen - whether that’s food to cities or manufactured goods to countryside. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/15 "2018-03-10T00:37:44Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Remember, the thing that triggered urbanization was the green revolution trend that allowed a smaller group of farmers to produce enough food for a larger urban population. IIRC we start to see the increase in automation and higher agricultural efficiency by the mid-1800’s. Perhaps the first part of that trend was around 1800, with canal networks (Erie canal and the US river systems) making bulk transport easier; followed by railroads making bulk transport even simpler. A barge or train can move a lot more, a lot more cheaply and faster than a guy with a cart and a pair of oxen - whether that’s food to cities or manufactured goods to countryside. Semi-nitpick: The Green Revolution occurred a century later. You’re talking about a part of the Industrial Revolution, which include the 19th-century wave of urbanization. I completely agree with everything you wrote, however - the Transportation Revolution was and still is a huge factor in the world. Anyway, going back to **Little Nemo** ’s statement: I’ve seen numbers from 75% to 95% rural, although that can be very misleading in some ways. Most people in what would become the United States were still tied into global commerce in some way. Especially in the South, a backcountry farmer might still ship tobacco down to a river dock, and then down to sea, where it could be picked up without ever reaching an “urban” center. Goods were moved inland in the same way. This became rather important during the Revolutionary War, because the British often assumed that people living in that way would be uninterested in the “wild-eyed fanatics” of the cities, not realizing that everyone was tied into one proto-national network. ---
**Author:** ![Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/marvin_the_martian/32/2898_2.png) [@Marvin\_the\_Martian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marvin_the_Martian)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/16 "2018-03-10T04:30:37Z")
[Here’s a document that has data from 1800 to 1960](http://www.nber.org/chapters/c1567.pdf) showing agricultural labor peaking at around 81% of the labor force around 1810. There seems to be a corresponding jump in the number of slaves, so I assume this peak is due to the increased profitability of Southern cotton after the invention of the cotton gin. Unfortunately the data for non-farm occupations is sketchy before 1840. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 6:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/17 "2018-03-10T06:31:00Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Semi-nitpick: The Green Revolution occurred a century later. You’re talking about a part of the Industrial Revolution, … Yes and no. The more specific “Green Revolution” was the dissemination of tools and techniques to even third-world subsistence farmers. Mechanization, fertilizer, and better management techniques allowed much higher production. But there was a gradual roll-out of industrial technology to assist farmers that allowed higher production to reach the growing industrial labour force, a process that fed on itself. The Cotton Gin, for example, revived the cotton plantation economy (and slavery) by automating the difficult processing of cotton and making it a competitive textile - which then became produced in industrial quantities, which freed local famers from the need to make their own homemade (wool? Linen?) cloth, etc. These sorts of economical changes fed on each other to increase the efficiency of each farmer. Wikipedia, for example, has a brief entry: > [@](#): > > Threshing is the process of loosening the edible part of grain (or other crop) from the husks and straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping and before winnowing, which separates the grain from the chaff. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain.[1] > > Threshing may be done by beating the grain using a flail on a threshing floor. Another traditional method of threshing is to make donkeys or oxen walk in circles on the grain on a hard surface. A modern version of this in some areas is to spread the grain on the surface of a country road so the grain may be threshed by the wheels of passing vehicles.[2] > > Hand threshing was laborious, with a bushel of wheat taking about an hour.[3] In the late 18th century, before threshing was mechanized, about one-quarter of agricultural labor was devoted to it.[4] > > Industrialization of threshing began in 1786 with the invention of the threshing machine by Scotsman Andrew Meikle. Today, in developed areas, it is now mostly done by machine, usually by a combine harvester, which harvests, threshes, and winnows the grain while it is still in the field.[5][6] ---
**Author:** ![Bijou\_Drains](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bijou_drains/32/2814_2.png) [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/18 "2018-03-10T17:17:30Z")
when I visited Jamestown they said that colonists there tried to make glass to sell back to the UK. The reason was that wood was already in short supply in UK and wood was plentiful in the colony so they could use plenty of wood to make the glass. Maybe there were other items that were made in the colonies cheaper and sold back to the UK ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2018, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/us-economy-in-1776/810264/19 "2018-03-10T21:21:14Z")
> [@md2000](#): > > Yes and no. The more specific “Green Revolution” was the dissemination of tools and techniques to even third-world subsistence farmers. Mechanization, fertilizer, and better management techniques allowed much higher production. I don’t disagree with your description of the changes, but you are trying to force the wrong term. The Green Revolution occurred four _generations_ after what you’re describing. It’s like trying to claim to claim that the Continental Congress declared the Emancipation Proclamation to liberate themselves from British Rule in 1776. I get the idea, but you’re trying an anachronistic term that refers to something quite different. Edit: Also, trying to cal this “the,” or even “a” Green Revolution is also deeply misleading because it’s the describes the wrong set of changes. The Green Revolution did involve some elements that already took place due to the industrialization and improving transportation, but also including far more sweeping changes in land management, hybridization, and the use of scientific techniques that simply weren’t a part of previous eras. These also occurred around the world, and not simply in previously marginal areas.