4,726 11,523 66 60,788 Paper 66 Printing-offices and binderies.... Coach, wagon, and agricultural implement making.21,994 ..... The following is taken from the official report on trade and navigation for the nine months from the 1st of October, 1842, to the 1st of July, 1843: The exports amounted (in round numbers) to... among which were domestic articles foreign 66 $84,346,000 ..77,793,000 6,552,000 Of the former there were exported: The tonnage of the whole American shipping amounted to.. 2,158,000 For exportation there are furnished by the fisheries.............. .... the forests. 2,112,000 .... 3,351,000 .10,919,000 1,092,000 2,120,000 264,000 3,763,000 312,000 1,625,000 4,650,000 .49,119,000 278,000 370,000 117,000 the manufactories of tobacco.. iron.... .... .... refined sugars. lead.... cotton stuffs. books and maps. combs and buttons.. 492,000 108,000 3,223,000 23,000 25,000 23,000 $45,428,000 .32,364,000 2,018,000 222,000 8,170,000 The number of tons of vessels leaving and entering port amounted in Savannah to 15,444 New Bedford 100,081 The vessels built in those nine months contained 63,617 tons. Cotton goods through the Hanse towns, amounting to..$210,000 from England.... Silk goods through the Hanse towns.. In New York, during the first six months, ..2,400,000 ..508,000 No country presents so many favorable opportunities for the establishment of land and water communications as the United States. A great part of the ground is level or offers only gentle declivities; and even the long mountain-ranges of the Alleghanies permit in several places the construction of artificial roads. The lakes and the St. Lawrence furnish most advantageous outlets on the north; the sea connects the eastern and southern coasts with the whole world; and those great arteries, the Missouri, Mississippi, and Ohio, are navigable as far up as the dwellings of men are or can be established. Even in the smaller rivers the tide penetrates so deep, or else they have such a slight descent and are so free from impediments, as to be navigated much further and by larger vessels than in most countries of the world. The inhabitants of the United States have not only made good use of these natural advantages, but have also employed their well known activity and enterprise in forming roads, digging canals, and laying down railways; and in these undertakings they have accomplished more in proportion than any other people. According to the amount of its population, America has 3 times as many canals, and 6 times as many railroads as England; and 4 times as many canals, and 17 times as many railroads as France. The advantages hence arising for trade and intercourse are inestimable; besides another circumstance which is of the highest importance, although often overlooked, * Chevalier, ii. 549. namely a closer uniting of the several parts of the great republic The canals, steamboats, and railroads clasp it together in their embrace; they have abridged both time and distance; have immeasurably augmented intercourse, as well as the imports, exports, and means of sale; have given value to the worthless timber; and have suddenly brought into the thinly peopled, uncultivated country, the most powerful means of effecting a rapid improvement. They form a mental no less than a physical bond of union,—an additional reproof to the folly which would separate these two tendencies, or even oppose them to each other. * It is impossible, or at least it would here be out of place, to speak of all the canals of America; I shall give some account only of the most important one, which connects the Hudson and New York with Lake Erie. When Gouverneur Morris, De Witt Clinton, and a few others of the same way of thinking, proposed the construction of the Erie Canal, even the daring Jefferson, it is said, regarded the plan as hasty and premature. By far the greater number of persons entertained the same opinion, and the general government refused its participation and support. But all these obstacles could not terrify Morris and Clinton, those great generals of peace, and numbers constantly flocked to their standard. On the 4th of July, 1817, the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, the great work was begun; and it was finished in eight years and four months, on the 4th of October, 1825, at an expense of 9 millions of dollars. Clinton and his assistants first in peaceful triumph descended the canal, rejoicing at the sight of a free people whose prosperity and unity had been advanced through their exertions. Cheers resounded throughout the towns and villages which they had called into existence, and they were every where received with expressions of the sincerest gratitude and love.t The The canal is 360 miles long, rises and falls 692 feet, has 83 locks, and (after its results had exceeded all expectation) has been considerably enlarged and indeed almost rebuilt. necessity for this enlargement, and the ability to perform it, resulted from the success of the experiment; for if this double scale, exceeding all belief and all powers of execution, had been adopted at first, the whole undertaking, like many others, would have fallen through. The highest estimate which had been made for the first ten years' income from the canal was a million and a half of dollars; it amounted in reality to ten millions, or more than the entire outlay. All the land on both sides of the canal rose in value exceedingly; every where sprang up houses, ham ⚫ Hall, i. 173. Natural History of New York, i. 117. The largest canal in Europe, that of Languedoc, is only about 130 miles long, although it is constructed with greater care. lets, towns, factories, churches, and schools. Rochester numbered 1,500 inhabitants in the year 1820, and 15,000 in 1835. Buffalo had 2,000 inhabitants in 1820, and 16,000 in 1835.* The population of Albany and New York doubled itself in this period; and the latter city took the start, which it will doubtless keep, of Philadelphia and Baltimore. The comparatively small state of New York, not satisfied with having constructed out of its own resources and by its own exertions, the longest canal in the world, kept on in the way in which it had begun, and had in the year 1839† about 850 miles of canals with 547 locks, on which there were annually transported goods to the value of 100 millions of thalers, and the amount of toll collected was on an average about two millions of thalers. Although the canals are shut up for from three to four months in the winter, there went in one year through the lock at Schenectady 24,000, and through Alexander's lock 26,000 boats and rafts, or very frequently ten boats on an average within the hour. In the year 1836 there went 48,777 boats. through the Erie canal, For 2,700 miles, from New York to New Orleans, river navigation has since been in most successful operation; and the length of the completed canals amounted in the year 1836 to 2,723 miles.§ The canals in Pennsylvania yielded about 6, and those in New York about 8 per cent. interest. The costs of transportation were every where extraordinarily diminished, and the time shortened. The length of canals finished in the young state of Ohio is reckoned at 767 miles.¶ Ramsay as early as 1784, and Fitch in 1785, had fully worked out the theoretical problem of the feasibility of propelling a vessel by steam; but when Fitch and Fulton prophesied the coming wonders of steam-engines and steamboats, they were misunderstood and laughed at. In the year 1807, Fulton built the first steamboat at Pittsburg; and in 1838 the number of steamengines in the United States was reckoned 3,000; of which about 800 were used in steamboats, 350 on railroads, and the rest in factories.** Their power was estimated at that of 100,000 horses; 2,546,000 3,467,000 + Gerstner, p. 19. (Official Report of 1838, p. 285.) Of course the amount differs in different years. Stevenson's Engineering, p. 213. Tanner, Canals, p. 22. Poussin, Puissance Américaine, ii. 137. ¶ American Almanac for 1844, p. 279. ** M'Culloch's Dict., append. Steam-vessels. |