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tute farmers to procure seed and food. Quite extensive imports of flour and corn~meal were made at this time.

While these calamities depressed the trade of the province and depleted the public treas- ury, the~ship building and ship owning inter- ests made up in a measure for the agricultu- ral falling off. Thus, in the seven years under review there were built 547 ships, which, for the population, was immense. The pork product suffered most, the failure of the potato crop reducing the number of hogs on the Island from 35,500 in 1841 to 19,860 in 1848.

Manufacturing had made great strides also—in fact, the Island was a hive of in- dustry. Carding mills, grist mills, fulling mills, saw mills were on every stream of im- portance, water being the motive power. The women of the families picked, spun and in most instances wove the cloth that supplied the fulling and pressing mills, turning out most excellent home-spun cloth, which was exported evdn to the aristocratic homes of England, besides sent to the lumber woods of the mainland and used by the sailors, ship- wrights, smiths and general population of the Island itself. The foreign and coasting trade had increased greatly. From 1848 to 1866 inclusive. Island vessels could be found in all ports of the world, especially in the latter half of this period. Thanks to the free-school system, the manual training of the home life of the time and the robust na- ture of our population, the farmers’ sons found that they could do almost anything. The young men rushed to the shipyards, the smithies the rigging loft and to the sea. Out of a class of boys from one country district

PAST AND PRESENT OF

school, thirteen schoolmates became shipmas- ters. These men displayed such an aptitude for the profession, such a morale and phy— sique, that they were at once the pride of their ship owners and the envy of their rivals. They were in every sense a success and ship owning and trading, not only with cargoes for owners’ account, but as common carriers, became a great source of wealth to the mer- chants and builders of the Island. To the trade in the products of the soil, the manu- facturing industry and the selling of ships, was now added the gains from owning and freighting the ships.

RECIPROCITY.

About 1855 the United States made a trade treaty of reciprocity with the imperial government which gave Prince Edward Is- land, as well as the other provinces of Brit- ish North America, a measure of free trade with the great republic. Soon the effect of this treaty was in evidence, not only in the

-trade returns as statistics, but in the pockets

of the people. An era of unprecedented prosperity for Prince Edward Island was ushered in. The people, who were free trad- ers in spirit and education—one of the in- scriptions on its copper coin (though spu- rious coin) was “Self Government and Free Trade"—-seized the splendid opportu- nity, 'with the result above mentioned. The Island commenced to blossom as the rose. To illustrate by actual figures how the trade and commerce with the United States ebbed and flowed before, during and after the reci- procity treaty, we here append some account of the imports and exports from and to that country: