54 Benjamin Franklin (1760 
cannot in the twenty-eight years have increased in a 
greater proportion than as four to one. The addi- 
tional demand, then, and consumption of goods from 
England, of thirteen parts in seventeen, more than 
the additional number would require, must be ow- 
ing to this: that the people, having by their in- 
dustry mended their circumstances, are enabled to 
indulge themselves in finer clothes, better furniture, 
and a more general use of all our manufactures than 
heretofore. 
In fact, the occasion for English goods in North 
America, and the inclination to have and use them, 
is, and must be for ages to come, much greater than 
the ability of the people to pay for them; they must 
therefore, as they now do, deny themselves many 
things they would otherwise choose to have, or in- 
crease their industry to obtain them. And thus, if 
they should at any time manufacture some coarse 
article, which, on account of its bulk or some other 
circumstance, cannot so well be brought to them 
from Britain, it only enables them the better to pay 
for finer goods, that otherwise they could not in- 
dulge themselves in; so that the exports thither are 
not diminished by such manufacture, but rather 
increased. The single article of manufacture in these 
colonies, mentioned by the Remarker, is hats made 
in New England. It is true, there have been, ever 
since the first settlement of that country, a few hat- 
ters there, drawn thither probably at first by the 
facility of getting beaver, while the woods were but 
little cleared, and there was plenty of those animals. 
The case is greatly altered now. The beaver skins 
Le 
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