Summer is concluding and the harvest is upon us. Our thoughts tend to be more autumn like as we arise each morning and feel the temperatures a bit cooler, see fog in the distant low pastures and visit the fruit and vegetable farmstands. We sip our delicious pumpkin coffee and wait in great anticipation for the colorful foliage that will visit us very soon in New Hampshire.
We make every effort to support the local farmers, the local bakers and our delicious restaurants. It is a very New England thing to do these days, shop local and support our neighbors. But, it wasn’t always this way, the tide turns just like the rise and fall of the great malls from past decades.
When our ancestors initially established the streets that we walk in Concord they were as interested in commerce as we certainly are today. Everyone must make a living, we all have our families to support and if we work closely in unison we will prosper along with our fellow citizens. There is so much truth in this analysis, it is very true and saturated with logic, lets take a look back to those very first merhcants that established themselves along Main Street in downtown Concord.
The first merchants along our Main Street were remarkably similar to the merhcants we see today. They were established, well stocked, competitive and marketing their wares the best they could. They worked hard and established an acceptable profit margin to support their respective businesses. It was these profitable lines that were also a tipping point during the colonial period. Taxation without representation, it has been said time and again.
Our Main Street merchants were selling local tea at a profit, but the King of England wanted a piece of that action. Tea was the preferred beverage in the colonies with many of the residents born in England carrying this taste to the colonies. As tea sales increased down on Main Street the merhcants were pleased, the sale of tea provided a profit and sustained the merchants.
England decided to place a tax on the tea that was sold, but they were not satisfied with just the tax; the crown dictated the products were to be purchased from approved sources and most notably imported into the colonies. The price increased, the consumers responded in their own boycotting ways. They stopped purchasing Main Street tea from England and found many natural herbs and spices growing wild in the surrounding forest that could be brewed into their very own “Patriot Tea” of sorts.
The tea tax and importation was just the starting point. If a young woman was planning a
wedding here in Concord and she was of means she would hire a dressmaker to make her wedding gown. The gowns were made of the finest material, primarily silk with assorted embroideries and lace. A budget conscience bride would make every attempt to secure the material for her wedding gown in an affordable manner one would think, but the cost was excessive for many reasons. Though silk was in fact made in the colonies, it was a controlled good in many cases. Just like tea, there were requirements with the silk being imported and there was a tax on these fine items. The list was endless for our ancestors, many fine wines and consumables were heavily taxed and imported according to British law that controlled our colonies.
As the Revolutionary War concluded, the heavy tax burdens dissipated and Americans were free to open commerce in many areas that were in need. Taxation without representation was no longer in existence and our ancestors began manufacturing American items in America.
One would contemplate this resulted in local sourcing to a great degree, and it did to a point. Your milk, cheese, eggs, honey, baked goods and so on were certainly locally sourced. But the taste of freedom left a taste for some of the finer things that were not manufactured locally.
Manufacturers in Connecticut made fine alarm clocks and you could still button your Boston garters into your Paris socks, your Baltimore suspenders onto your Duluth coveralls while wearing your Lynn shoes and Danbury hat.
With Abbot Downing Company at the south end of our Main Street, you could purchase the finest harness from their suppliers. Hook the local harness to your Missouri mule and hitch your Moline plow from Illinois to plow your fields that were secured by mortgages from banks all over America.
Your dinner might even include a Cincinnati ham cooked in Chicago lard on a Detroit stove burning Wyoming coal.
The point I have exceedingly emphasized is quite simple. The local products from a century ago were not always local.
We are a world full of consumers and there is a manufacturer providing any items that you might want to purchase. The ease of the transaction has now grown to such a luxurious process that we can quite easily have an impulse to purchase any item, order this item on our computers from the comfort of our homes and find the items just purchased on our doorsteps the very next day. Quite fascinating indeed.
But it is the history laden blood in my veins steeped with nostalgia that prevents me from doing what everyone else is doing. I continue to do what I want to do because the purchase becomes part of both the solution of filling a need while also providing a sense of social responsibility for me. A potato isn’t always a potato; it is so much more. When I purchase my potatoes from a supermarket, the potatoes might have been grown many states away from my home. But, when I purchase those potatoes on a Saturday morning down on Main Street at the farmers market, they seem to taste better. Not in the way you might think but in a different sort of way. I select my potatoes from the local merchant with cash, the merchant hands me my change, change that he holds in his hands. Hands that plowed the fields, planted the seeds, harvested the potatoes and then transported those potatoes down to Main Street to sell to the citizens of our community.
In closing, for my remaining years I will walk as much as possible, enjoying fresh coffee from a local supplier while I engage in conversations with some of the finest people I encounter. Real people with real interest. Sincere people with a desire to feed their families. I don’t worry about taxes or imported goods like my ancestors in Concord did a long time ago. Perhaps my thoughts are as pure and sweet as a sip of Patriot tea.