217. The coast north of Cape Cod has many bays and harbors that boats can enter. But this part of the coast is very rocky, and there are many islands and capes that might wreck the boats in times of fog and storm. To make sailing safe for fishermen and other sailors, the government has built lighthouses along the shore at places that are dangerous for ships. The boatmen can tell just where they are by seeing the lights. A good sailor knows his coast and its lights as well as you know your way to school. In times of fogs, when the lights cannot be seen, bells and fog horns tell the sailor that his ship is getting near to danger. Not only the New England coast, but the sea coasts of all civilized countries have lighthouses to make sailing safe near their shores. The light house keeper has a very lonely life.
218. Fishing makes fish ing business helped to make traders of the New England colonists. They had to build good strong boats to sail out to the fishing banks. They invented a kind of eisy sail ing boat called a schooner. When they had more dried cod than they could use at home, it was easy to sail in their good strong boats over to England, or down to the West Indies, to sell fish, and bring back English goods or West Indian sugar and molasses. The people in the West Indies also wanted lumber, which the New England forests furnished. As ships went out every year with fish and lumber, the traders began to take along shoes that the shoemaker had made, tinware from the tinsmith, clocks from the clockmaker, guns from the gunsmith, and knives from the blacksmith. For these reasons New England got a start at manufacturing before any other part of the country. The
people's ships gave them a chance to sell the things they made by hand in their farm and village shops.
Then Mr. Samuel Slater came from England in 1790 (Sec. 185), and showed the New Englanders how to make cotton cloth by machinery. Soon after that, boats went sailing down to Charleston and Savannah to get bales of cotton. This they brought back to be made into cloth in the mills of New England, and when the boats again went south after more raw cotton, they took along some of the cotton cloth, and some knives, too, and other manufactured goods.
219. Trading makes manu facture.—When the Erie Canal and the railroads came, the boats and trains gave the men who owned factories a chance to send their goods west of the mountains,- and to get food from the western farmers jdreturn. This made more-"business for the fac tories, and many New Eng land farmers left their farms and went to work in the fac tories by the waterfalls. The people who worked in the fac tories needed to live near their work, and thus many towns grew up around factories and mills. Now you see why New England has more of her people living in towns than has any other part of the United States. Count the New England harbors. As city people must buy almost every thing they use, it takes a great trade to support all these people in the New England cities. Hundreds of trains now go into and out of New England every day, and each year many hundreds of ships sail into her harbors from other cities in America and from foreign lands. New England would have less trade if she had more farms to feed herself.