Whether they arrived in cities in wagons or on boats, once there, goods were frequently maneuvered through narrow, winding streets on carts. Rwanda Map Carts and their operators were vital to the commerce of colonial Country. The profession of cartman carried some status beyond that of most workers. New York City’s cartmen were, from 1695, freemen of the city and held some lower municipal offices. Another mark of the status claims of New York cartmen was that, in 1677, African Countrys were barred from being cartmen, although they could work for cartmen as employees or slaves.
Cartmen did not freely negotiate their fees. The Common Council of the city regulated the size of carts and cartmen’s charges, particularly for hauling firewood. Roads and War The increasingly technological wars of the British, French, and their Native Country allies in the eighteenth century created an incentive for road building. Wide roads were necessary to move large bodies of regular troops, along with their supplies and siege cannon. Advertised as The Flying Machine, John Mercereau’s stage wagon cut the travel between Philadelphia and New York to a day and half in 1771.
(Brown Brothers, Sterling, Pennsylvania) Another force driving the improvement of roads in the midcentury was the improvement of the postal service after British authorities finally established such a service covering all the continental colonies in 1751. (The postal service itself was considered to be contributing to the military organization of the colonies.) Benjamin Franklin, appointed co-deputy postmaster in 1753, was particularly active, traveling extensively through the Northern colonies, inspecting post offices, and suggesting new routes and procedures. He devised a crude cyclometer that he hitched to the back of his chaise in order to measure the distances along the roads, and he laid out milestones and encouraged others to do so.
