Price : American Port Towns	151

die AmWican Revolution, its position was entirely artificial. Its
trade waabased upon no imperatives of geography but upon a ser-
ies of historic accidents that brought together a trading population
diere and facilitated die accumulation of capital and entrepreneurial
and technical skills. Even it in hour of prosperity, Newport's po-
sition was being undermined by die development of Providence
at die head of Narragansett Bay on the mainland. Providence's
trade to the West Indies and soudiern colonies inevitably inter-
cepted much ofplewport's trade from its very limited natural hin-
terland. The American Revolution dispersed the trading commu-
nity at Newport ind dissipated much of dieir capital, and the town
was never again to be a serious commercial center. (Needless to
say, it could not have, under the new federal government of 1789,
die advantages of inefficient tax collection it had enjoyed when
partpf the Bsjrish Empire.)	/ ^-f~^~^^^-^\
(Philadclphia^position was as natural/as that of Newport: was
artificial. WTiiIe the New England cojfamercial centers, starting
widi Boston and Newport, had trading hinterlands that hugged
open coasdines and die valleys of navigable rivers and so were open
to die intrusion of such rival, upstart port towns as Salem, Provi-
dence, and New London, die richest hinterland of Philadelphia lay
inland from die town—to the west and nordiwest—and for long
had access to no odier large port town where its produce could be
vended. Only after die zone of settlement in Pennsylvania ex-
panded to die west of die Susquehanna River did die farmers and
traders of central Pennsylvania have die option of sending dieir
produce soudiward to die rival port of Baltimore. This alternative,
however, became real only after the American Revolution.54
/^ Between Philadelphia and the Susquehanna River lay a territory
,g_f supeliui !>uil, will suited lu giuwllig wheat. Un this soil settle-
ment became relatively thick in die eighteendi century, particularly
diat of German immigrants. In addition to raising wheat and hogs,
diey fattened cattle, including many driven in from the more out-
lying sections of Pennsylvania and up from die soudi along a drove

54. For the later story, see James Wcston Livingood, Tlie Philadelphia-Baltimore Trade
Rivalry 1780-1860 (Hanisburg, Pa., 1947)-