Port Towns	135

tematic analysis. T,ne Boston Ap\^ for 1 7ngjKnw that persons who
can be considered Vo bcloflgto the "industrial sector" constituted
26.$ percent of the tax-inscribed adult male population in 1790;
our rough equivalent data tor Philadelphia show_26.8ijpercenT
(1774) or 27.31 percent (1780-1783) in the same classification — not
a significant difference, though Fhdadelphia has~cbmmonly been
thought of as being much more "industrial" than Boston (Appen-
dbrC). However, when we look at the 664 individuals at Boston
or the 1,017 at Philadelphia who constituted the "industrial " sector,
we find them, a rather disparate lot. Some ot them, particularly the
shoemakers, metal craftsmen, and cabinetmakers, must have been
working tor a predominantly local clientele_antLcould arguably
have been enrolled at least in part in the rservice "\sector. If the
largest group in the industrial sector at Philadelphia were the leather
workers processing the hides produced on the farms of Pennsylvania
and New Jersey, the largest at Boston consisted of those in ship-
building and shipfitting work. These last could with justice be
ascribed in good part to the "commercial-maritime" sector, for
much of their work consisted of building and repairing ships for
Boston's own commercial fleet and fisheries; only a part of their
output was for the market.24 Were we to transfer from our "in-
dustrial sector" some shoemakers and the like to the service sector
and some shipwrights, ropemakers, and such to the commercial
sector, those left in the more strictly defined "industrial sector"
(i.e., those making goods for outside markets) would be a smaller
proportion of the whole — perhaps only 10 or 15 percent instead of
the 26^a7^e?Ceiir originally shown.

At(NewYork< the "industrial "sector appears to decline from
32 percent in the midcentury freemen's register to only 16.67 Per~
cent in the yellow fever sample of 1795, compared to the 26.6 to
27.3 percent for Boston and Philadelphia. This is die largest dis-
crepancy produced by our sectoral comparisons. Other nonquan-
titative data suggest a large variety of crafts in mid-eighteendi-

24. For the structure of Boston's shipbuilding and shipowning at the beginning of the
century, see Bernard Bailyn and Lotte Bailyn, Massachusetts Shipping 1697-1714: A Statis-
tical Study (Cambridge, 1959).