ABSTRACT
An outstanding feature of labour was self-employment. Skilled artisans, shopkeepers, professional men, planters, proprietors of small businesses, merchants, traders, pioneers, and landowning farmers made up a majority of the free population. The wage-earning group included farm hands, sailors, dock workers, fishermen, boatmen, miners, lumbermen, clerks, journeymen, domestic servants, labourers on roads, bridges, and canals, and helpers in factories, forges, foundries, and mills. Before 1815 the locations of mills and plants in industries of primary importance were determined by nearness to either raw materials or water power. Since farming remained the principal occupation it exerted a potent influence on industry, particularly with respect to attitudes toward work, employers, property rights, and bargaining. Much of the crude iron went to the shops of village blacksmiths, there to be shaped into numerous articles needed by neighbouring farmers. Other users of crude iron were foundries in which molten metal was poured into molds or cavities formed in moistened, heat-resistant sand.
