CHAPTER VIII.

VAST AND RAPIDLY INCREASIng Commerce.-Home and foreign. Imports and exports. Tonnage. Magnificent lines of river and ocean steamers. Canals, railroads, and electric telegraphs. Naval architecture and shipping. Agricultural products. Manufactories and manufactures. Their character and variety. Principal districts in which established: Lowell, &c. Wealth of the United States. How or from what source principally derived. Its quality. General distribution. Comparative absence of poverty throughout the Union. General contentment and happiness of the working classes. Active enterprising habits of all classes. Prevailing mania for the possession of wealth.

Enjoying, as she does, the full benefits of her fertility and her situation, unencumbered by the restraints of jealous monopolies such as existed during her subjection to Great Britain, the commercial power of the United States is the second in the world.

The commercial marine of the United States is only inferior to that of England. These two great nations divide the dominion of the sea, and the carrying trade of the world.

In 1852, the number of trading vessels belonging to the United States was 1,444. Their tonnage was estimated at about half that of Great Britain, or 351,494 tons.

Within the last ten years the imports and exports have increased from 300,000,000 to over 400,000,000; the tonnage, inward and outward, from 6,700,703 to 10,591,043 tons;* the tonnage owned from 2,839,000 to 4,200,000 tons.

These facts are more than substantiated by a later estimate of an American journalist.

The total tonnage of the whole civilized world, excluding only China and the East, consists of about 136,000 vessels of 14,500,000 tons. Of this total tonnage, 9,768,172 belong to Great Britain and the United States; so that, excluding these two great maritime nations, the total commercial tonnage of the remainder of the civilized world is but 4,500,000, or less than

* In the year ending June 30th, 1852, the imports into the United States from Great Britain and Ireland were valued at 90,628,339 dollars, and the exports to 115,569,975 dollars.-Chambers's Journal.

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that which either Great Britain or the United States individually possess. Even France, which comes next in the scale, is insignificant in comparison, being but 716,000 tons against 5,043,270 for Great Britain, and 4,724,902 for the United States. Italy and Sardinia stand next to France, then Holland, Prussia, Spain, Norway, Sweden, &c.

The comparative entrances and clearances of Great Britain and her colonies, and the United States, in 1854, were as follows:- Great Britain and colonies, 42,563,362; United States, 40,000,000. It would appear from this calculation that the tonnage of the United States is only one-sixteenth less than that of England. This fact, when taken in connection with its present rapid increase, the shipping of the United States within the last ten years has been quadrupled, while her population has been only doubled, shows how short will be the time required to overbalance the advantages which Great Britain now possesses, and to place the United States first in the rank of commercial nations.*

It is, indeed, asserted that the American tonnage is now, in 1856, 5,400,000 tons, having increased 410,000 tons during the past year, an increase larger than the whole tonnage of Spain, Portugal, and Russia combined, and will make a fleet of 5,400 ships of 1,000 tons each, while that of England is said to be 5,200,000 tons. The number of vessels built in the United States in the year ending June 30th, 1854, was 1,774; tonnage of the same, 535,636. Total tonnage of the United States at the same rate, 4,802,902 tons; of which, registered, 2,333,819; enrolled and licensed, 2,469,083; in whale fishery, 181,901; coasting trade, 2,273,900; cod fishery, 102,194; mackerel fishery, 35,041; steam navigation, 676,607. Whole number of American vessels entered during the year from foreign countries, 9,455; of foreign vessels, 9,648; total, 19,103. Whole number of American vessels cleared for foreign countries, 9,570; whole number of foreign vessels, 9,503; total, 19,073. Crews of American vessels entered, men, 135,927; boys, 726; total, 136,653: crews of foreign vessels entered, men, 100,243; boys, 1,212; total, 101,455. Crews of American vessels cleared, men, 141,128; boys, 797; total, 141,925: crews of foreign vessels cleared, men, 98,617; boys, 1,196; total, 99,813. The

* Blackwood, June, 1854. Lon. Jour., 1856. American Paper, Philadelphia, 1856.

total tonnage of the United States, June 30th, 1855, was 5,212,001 tons; of which, registered, 2,535,136; enrolled and licensed, 2,676,864; including 859,446 in whaling, fishing, and steam navigation. British tonnage in 1854, 5,043,270 tons.*

Their commerce extends to all parts of the earth, and embraces the products and manufactures of all nations, from the barren coasts of Labrador to New Holland, the South Sea Islands, China, India, and the continents of Africa and Europe; and from the north-west region of America and the West Indies, to the isles of the Pacific Ocean and Cape Horn.

The

The foreign trade exhibits an aggregate of 80,000,000 of imports and exports; while no part of the world presents such an extensive inland commerce; this greatly exceeds the foreign; while the shipping in 1852 amounted to 5,000,000 of tonnage, and is annually increasing at the ratio of 300,000 tons. value of inland imports for the year ending June, 1855, was 304,562,380 dollars; of the exports, 275,796,320 dollars. The commerce of the valley of the Mississippi alone was estimated in 1850 at the value of 439,000,000 of dollars, being double the amount of the whole foreign commerce of the nation.

The increase of lake tonnage for the year ending June 30, 1855, was a fraction less than 19 per cent.

A greater amount of tonnage enters and clears on the lakes between the United States and Canada, than between the United States and any other foreign port.

The lake tonnage for 1855 was 345,000 tons, which, valued at 45 dollars per ton, is 14,838,000 dollars.

The present value of lake commerce (exclusive of Presque Isle and Macinac, not reported) is 608,310,320 dollars.

The value of property exposed to perils of lake navigation, is greater than all the merchandise exported from the United States to all foreign countries, or imported from all foreign countries to the United States.

The seven Lake States-New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin,-have a population of 9,784,550, while the other twenty-four States have a population of 9,768,448, leaving a balance in favour of these seven States over the twenty-four States, of over 16,000. This difference is increasing daily.

* Christian Almanac, 1857.

The value of vessels shipwrecked in eight years was 8,852,064 dollars.

Damages sustained by vessels for 1854, by St. Clair Flats, 660,146 dollars 56 cents.

From 1837 to 1855 there has been collected for revenue on the lakes, 5,511,129 dollars 98 cents. Congress in the same time has appropriated for lake harbours, 2,884,125 dollars, leaving a balance in the United States treasury, as received from lake commerce, over and above what has been taken from the treasury to benefit the lakes, the handsome sum of 2,627,004 dollars 98 cents. Deduct the cost and expenses of the lake light-houses for the same time, and the treasury still has a balance of over 1,000,000 dollars.

Steamships navigate and throng all the principal rivers, canals, and bays, amounting to 400,000 tons, and are claimed as an American invention. Even the bosoms of the remotest lakes are whitened with the sails of commerce. The smoke of the passing steamboats is seen rising in columns among their green islands and the fairy settlements upon their banks.

The Mississippi and its tributaries alone are traversed by upwards of 600 steamboats, all of which make several voyages a year; whilst the magnificent Hudson, the first great link in the stupendous chain of inland transport, gives access to regions more magnificent still, and pours forth its tide to the remotest districts of the north-west, at the same time that it brings back in a ceaseless current the boundless wealth of the most fertile portions of the earth into the bosom of the Empire City. These are the highways of commerce for the United States, and with her lakes and shores of 5,000 miles extent, besides canals and railways, completed and under construction, from every portion of the sea coast and all parts of the interior, give to her the facilities of trade and transit to a degree unequalled by any other country in the world!

Canals are numerous; and Lake Erie, or Albany Canal, extends from Lake Erie to the Hudson,-from Albany to Buffalo,—a distance of 365 miles. The cutting of this canal cost £1,200,000. Like that of the Earl of Bridgewater in England, it is the first and most important in America, and is next in extent to the Imperial Canal in China, which opens a communication from Pekin to Canton, a distance of 1,600 miles.

The route by which the commerce of the west reaches New Orleans, its chief port of shipment, is thus described by an

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American writer:-"The order in which the several collecting districts on the lakes and rivers of the interior are shown, commences with Lake Champlain, from which it extends up the St. Lawrence river and Lake Ontario to the Niagara river; thence up Lake Erie, the Detroit river, and Lake Huron, to Michilitmakinac; thence up Lake Michigan to Chicago; thence across to the Mississippi river, and down that stream to New Orleans; thus extending on a natural line of interior navigation, which has but two slight interruptions from the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence to those of the Gulf of Mexico, a distance of not less than 2,850 miles; upon which is employed, for purposes of trade and travel, a steam conveyance of 69,166 tons. The Ohio basin forms of itself a cross section of 1,100 miles in length, embracing simply the district on that river and its tributaries."* This is the Great Western waterway, so happily adapted to attract towards the southern ports the produce collected in Lakes Superior, Michigan, Huron, and Erie, with their magnificent rivers.

The other canals of importance are the Northern and the Ohio, with one in progress of excavation, designed (like that of Languedoc, which opened a communication between the ocean and the Mediterranean sea) to connect the whole extent of the vast western territory with the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. At the same time that water carriage in the States facilitates the costly freight of her vessels, it may be said that the cost of transport of any heavy article from the remoter parts of England to London or Liverpool would exceed that of the same article from Chicago at the end of Lake Michigan on the western prairie of America.

The railroads built, and in progress, in 1850, extended about 10,000 miles, at a total cost of 300,000,000 dollars; increased to 13,300 miles in 1852, with ten more in progress, calculated to cost 4,000,000 of dollars. One was lately established from Lake Michigan to Rock Island, on the Mississippi, 1,500 miles in length, connecting the Mississippi with the Atlantic.

From statistical tables published during the year 1856, exhibiting the progressive annual increase of the miles of railway in the United States since 1828, it appears that there is now in the Union, exclusive of double and treble tracks,

* Mr. Senator Calhoun, in his Report to the Memphis Convention, appointed to devise means for improving navigation in the western waters.