30
talents and skills sometimes produced surprisingly extraordinary results. To
be self-sustaining, they started their own woodworking shops to make furni-
ture, their own sewing shops to make clothing, they saved their own seeds
to plant another year, they grew their own corn and built broom factories to
make brooms, etc. But they had surpluses and their products were so good
that neighbors wanted to buy, and so one after another industry was born.
In 1790 Joseph Turner, who supervised the two-acre family garden
at Watervliet, began to offer a few surplus seeds for sale. His successor,
Ebenezer Alden, invented a gadget to print the seedbags. By 1811, the
, j ;\-.



Watervliet Shakers were raising $3000 in seeds per year, with salesmen on
the road. In 1819, they signed a pact that they would not sell any seeds they
had not raised themselves. The farmers used to come to the Shakers; then
the Shaker seed salesmen began peddling with wagons, taking along other
goods too. Besides seeds, their wagons carried scythes, snaths, spinning
wheels, brooms, brushes, clothespins, and round wooden spitoons or "spit
boxes," which were sold for 25 apiece. Sugar boxes brought 80? a nest,
horn combs $1 a dozen, candlewicking 25 a pound. Floor mops made of tow,
cotton and wool sold at $2. 25 a dozen wholesale. All kinds* of whips were
made and peddled along with leather mittens, diaper (bird's eye) and other
cloth, from 1809 on.19
They also sold their seeds, and other products, through agents in
cities, the first markets used being Albany, Poughkeepsie, Hudson, and

19, Johnson, Laurence A. Over the Counter and On the Shelf: Country
Storekeeping in AmEricaJ_1620-1920. p. 71