Price : American Port Towns

133

the local market (service sector) so that the general proportions
suggested by our sectoral totals are only minimally distorted.

With these data in hand, we may proceed to our sectoral analysis,
starting with die service sector. Remembering the point made
above that die number of service personnel (whether doctors or
chimney sweeps) is ultimately dependent upon the odier more in-
dependent activities in the town, the readers/need not be unduly
impressed by the proportions we find ascribable to this sector.
From Kulikoff's data, it would appear/tnat at least 45 percent of
Boston's tax-inscribed adult males in 1790 were employed in the
service sector. The equivalent figures are 48.93 to 49.29 percent for
Philadelphia and 46.7 to 56.5OŁercent for New York. In general,
it seems safe to say that, in aji'substantial colonial towns, the service
sector broadly conceived/accounted for around 50 percent of the
employed adult male population. (The proportion would probably
be even higher in tjze enumerated towns if we could get accurate
information on slaves and women and on apprentices and other
employees wWresided on the premises of their employers.) Much
rigorous quantification remains to be done, but the burden of proof
lies on thjtfse who would claim that other towns might have had
significantly different patterns. Of course, however finely measured,
die iinpressive size of die service sector tells us nothing about die
raixn d'etre of die town or of its ultimate proportions. To under-

id diem, we must try to measure the more independent vari-
'ables: the public, industrial, and commercial sectors.

Injtudying die American towns of die eighteenth century, we\\

____	jpn or sector: I)
governmental and ecclpsiasriral ^rninitfnfff^"^The clergy were

general population. There were no
bishops, cathedral chapters, or other types of salaried ecclesiastical
administrators in any of the thirteen colonies. Most university col-
leges were of course church related or church controlled, but only
two of them were in large towns (New York and Philadelphia)
and could not have added as much as i percent to die population of
those places. (In smaller towns, such as Cambridge or Princeton,
the presence of a college had greater economic and demographic