1. Clark, V.S., History of Manufacture in the United States, McGraw Hill, NY  1929, Pg. 33-34.

Colonial Legislation Affecting Manufactures 33

BOUNTIES, PREMIUMS, AND SUBSIDIES ON RAW MATERIALS AND MANUFACTURES. Among the most prominent colonial laws relating to manufactures, were those providing bounties, premiums, and subsidies. Bounties, which were the most common, applied properly to all articles of a specified kind and quality, and were designed to promote an abundant production. Premiums were given for a few specimens of exceptional quality, and logically were intended to raise the standard of manufactures. Subsidies differed from bounties and premiums in being offered only to a particular person, instead of to any producer, though like the former they were paid upon products. For this last reason they are not to be confounded with such forms of aid to specific individuals or companies as loans, land grants, lotteries, monopolies, and other assistance not based on the amount and quality of the articles manufactured. Bounties on raw materials were given to encourage manufactures rather than agriculture, even when they applied to such agricultural commodities as hemp, flax, and wool. After the British government subsidized naval stores from America, some colonial flax and hemp bounties were intended to foster the production of those commodities for British use, and therefore directly to affect agriculture rather than manufactures. But except in a few of the planting colonies, the local market continued to absorb most of these products; so that in spite of the artificial inducement to export, the resulting increase in raw materials was a benefit principally to colonial tradesmen. The earlier bounties on raw materials related exclusively to home manufactures, and in the preamble or body of the acts providing them they are stated to be for the purpose of encouraging domestic spinning and weaving and discouraging the importation of cloth from abroad. For example the Maryland law of 1671, which granted a bounty of a pound of tobacco for every pound of hemp raised in the province, and 2poundsof tobacco for every pound of flax, was due to the great quantities of linen cloth and other wares wrought by manual occupation which are brought from foreign places.” J The law was successful enough in the minds of the provincial legislators to be reenacted at least twice, and continued in force for a quarter of a century. In 1727 the same colony granted a bounty on hemp alone, equal to that provided by the previous law, but this time for the purpose of supplying England with that commodity. Hemp bounties were granted, in cooperation with the British acts of 1722 and 1764, subsidizing American naval stores, in 1722 by Virginia, South Carolina, and Pennsylvania; in 1763 by New York; in 1764 by North Carolina; in 1765 by New Jersey; and in 1769 again by Virginia. In 1732 the Pennsylvania bounties were dis 1 Maryland, Archives, Proceedings of the Assembly, II, 300; VII, 325, 496.

continued, because large quantities of hemp were already produced and good prices obtained.1 The preparation of hemp for market was considered a manufacture. The New Jersey and South Carolina laws also provided a bounty on flax. In 1770 South Carolina, in an act to encourage linen manufactures, granted a bounty of £12 proclamation money on every hundredweight of flax raised and dressed in the colony.1 That the New England bounty laws were passed with less regard for British requirements than those of the other colonies is indicated by their dates. About 1700 Massachusetts had an act on its statute books “to encourage the sewing and well manufacturing of hemp,” and compelled local cordage-makers to use hemp raised in the province.” In 1721 Rhode Island granted a bounty of 6 pence a pound on water- rotted hemp raised and prepared in the colony, and the next year encouraged its manufacture into cloth.4 Thirty years later the same colony granted a bounty of a penny a pound on flax cured and dressed within its boundaries.6 In 1734 Connecticut offered a bounty of 4 pence a pound on water-rotted hemp.6 The same colony and some of its southern neighbors endeavored to promote the production of silk by bounties. The only raw materials that received this form of encouragement were textile fibers, which were always in local demand and which were relatively less abundant in America than the gross commodities used m other manufactures. Hemp never was ex ported extensively to England, even when the bounty was highest, and though burdened with British duties and extra freight, it was imported inconsiderable quantities from Europe by New England rope-makers.7 The most numerous and important colonial bounties were for textiles. The jealous watch that England kept over American woolen manufactures caused relatively more attention to be given to linen, though in the seventeenth century woolen bounties were not uncommon. In 1640 Massachusetts gave a bounty on cloth made in the colony from native wool.8 In 1662 Virginia gave a bounty of 5 pounds of tobacco for every yard of woolen cloth made in the province; and in 1682, by a second law, made the bounty 6 pounds of tobacco for every yard of woolen or mixed fabric of home manufacture.9 In the latter year Maryland, following a precedent established by Virginia twenty years before, even discriminated in favor of woolen homespuns, by granting a bounty of 10 pounds of tobacco a yard for this cloth, as compared with only 6 pounds a yard for linen.10 However, after the 1 Pennsylvania, Statutes at Large, IV, 231. * South Carolina, Statutes at Large (ed. Cooper), IV, 315. * Massachusetts, Arts and,Laas, 1726, p. 169. 4 Rhode Island, ^rtjanrfLaiw, 1730, pp. 149,273; ibid., 1745, p. 297; Rhode Island, Records, J * , -M / • * Rhode Island, Acts and Laws, Apr. 1751, p. 116. * Connecticut, Public Records, VII, 512, May 11, 1734. 7 See page 25, preceding. * Massachusetts, Records of the Governor and Company, I, 316. » Virginia, Statutes at Large, II, 120, 503. 10 Maryland, Archives, Proceedings of Assembly, VII, 325.