What Beekman and men like him almost never did was invest their profits in plantations. Trade, not production, was the New Yorkers’ forte, and they tended to think of the West Indian plutocracy as wildly dissolute and irresponsible. Nor did more than a handful of them engage in direct trade with England. Local products alone couldn’t fetch high enough prices in the mother country to pay for imported manufactures. Also, because the prevailing winds blew out of the west, getting back to New York from, say, Bristol or Liverpool was a hazardous and time-consuming proposition. Ships outward bound
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