1837 to 1846, eight millions; from 1847 to 1856, ten millions; and that for 1858, above twelve millions; so that the trade has doubled in twenty-five years. It is difficult to estimate the amount of home cousumption, but it is at least equal to that of the exports, which gives a probable total product of £1,000,000, or about the same as that of England. The three principal towns where the manufacture of pomades and oils is carried on, are Grasse, Cannes, and Nice. From the details furnished by M. PILAR, one of the first manufacturers of Grasse, it appears that there are about one hundred houses engaged in that occupation, and in that of distilling essential oil, materials for which abound in the neighborhood. Out of that number, seventy are in Grasse, which may be called the head quarters of the trade. The following are approximate numbers and values of the flowers consumed in that locality for manufacturing purposes : 800,000 kilos., or 1,700,000 lbs. of orange flowers.. Value. £32,000 10,000 6,000 66,000 lbs. of violets..... 7,000 66 60,000 lbs. of cassie.. 10,000 3,000 The average quantities of the principal articles manufactured are Value. £250,000 300,000 kilos., or 660,000 lbs. of scented pomades and oil....... 176,000 lbs. of rose water...... This does not include the essential oils, of which the list would be too long ; but some of them are very valuable, such as the Neroli, for instance, which is distilled from orange flowers, and is worth about £10 per pound. HOW RAILROAD IRON IS MADE. An excursionist through the coal fields of Pennsylvania communicates to the Evening Post a description of the process of making "pig" iron, and the rolling it for railway purposes, from which we take the following extract: There! they are going to let out the moulten iron! The men are crowding about the enormous fire-place built about the foot of the furnace, and through a little door we already catch a glimpse of the burning material within. With a few blows of the hammer a sliding door is removed, and the stream of molten metal gushes out, rushing slowly along the channel, sputtering up in a spray of sparks at any little obstacle, and gradually filling up the first row of sand moulds. The channel is then obstructed, so the metal enters the second row, and soon after the third, in all of which it gradually cools-this effect being hastened by the sand loosely thrown over the entire bed, as sugar is sprinkled over a waffle. In half an hour or so, the workmen turn over the "pigs," as the bars of iron thus formed in the moulds are called, with long poles, to allow them to cool. They are then cast into cars and drawn by mules to the rolling mill, a quarter of a mile distant. The machinery connected with this casting foundry is perfectly colossal. It is enclosed in a solid brick building a few rods distant, and the engineers claim that it is the largest in the United States, except that in a similar establishment at Catasauqua, which is the same size, and was made by the same machinists in Philadelphia. The principal wheel is twenty-eight feet in diameter-about half the diameter of the padale-wheels of the Great Eastern-and the cylinder is ten feet stroke and fifty-eight inches in diameter. There are tour of these engines with their appurtenances, belonging to the establishment, though, owing to the limited demand for iron, only one of them is at present in operation. The size of this machinery is so great that there is something almost sublime in its work ing, as it continues night and day, with its never-tiring activity, performing its appointed task with no grating, no clanking, nothing but its mighty throbbing to suggest the power concentrated in it. All this machinery is used to produce wind, to condense the air and blow it through enormous iron pipes upon the furnaces. In fact, this colossal engine is but the motor to blow a gigantic bellows. We have followed Mr. WISP and the professor in their researches into the manufacture of iron from the time the ore is brought from the rivers to its metamorphosis into pig iron, and its removal to the rolling mill. Arriving at this place, the iron is thrust into large furnaces of burning coal, and there melted. Two men manage each furnace, taking their turns at stirring up the molten mass with long iron poles. This is called "puddling." At the proper moment, a quantity of this fiery-hot melted iron is taken out of the furnace in the form of a ball about two feet in diameter, cast on an iron wheelbarrow, wheeled quickly to a long iron trough, through which it falls on an inclined plane to the story below. Here it is received in a mould, and assumes the shape of an oblong mass. It is passed through rollers and expanded till it looks like the long slab of an ordinary mantel-piece. It is then melted again, goes through another process of moulding and expansion, is caught up by other rollers and pulled and crushed out till it appears in the shape of a long iron pole. While passing under the last roller, its appearance is singularly beautiful, as it undulates gracefully and slowly, like a mighty serpent of flame, instead of merely a long bar of red-hot iron. At the proper moment, enormous shears clip the ends of the bars off, reducing them to a uniform length for railroad iron. This clipping process is the signal for a magnificent fountain of sparks, which shoot out in every direction, forming a pyrotechnic display of unusual splendor. COTTON MANUFACTURES. There have been large losses by investments in cotton manufactures. The present year offers better prospects for capital in this channel, but for some years the results have been, in many cases, disastrons. We have before us a list of forty-three New England companies, (mainly cotton.) whose shares are sold in Boston. They represent a capital of over $14,000,000. The par value of shares of nineteen of these companies is one thousand dollars. The largest capital of any one company is $3,000,000, (the Amoskeag.) three of them have over $2,000,000 each, and eighteen others have from one to two millions each. Of these forty-three companies, the shares of only eighteen are reported above par, ranging from ten per cent permium to par, while some are at thirty, forty, and fifty per cent discount. England, with cheap labor and cheap capital, has added, in two years only, twenty-five per cent to her exports of cotton goods and yarns, viz. :— A Parliamentary report recently stated the wages of Manchester as nine shillings per week for women, 8 shillings per week for girls and women, (as scutchers in cotton mills,) ten shillings for young men and boys as spinners, and others varying from twelve to thirty shillings for men and women in the more advanced work. As wages and capital form more than three-fourths of the cost of cotton goods, it is not surprising that these low wages have contributed to the growth of England and her foreign export of cotton goods, to the extent of £230,000,000 annually. GAS AND OIL. The cheapness of gas, as compared with other modes of procuring artificial light, may be seen from the following table : It must be borne in mind that this table is made for the English market, showing, as it does, at what a low rate gas can be manufactured, and still pay fair dividends. According to this table, gas is afforded at the low sum of one dollar per thousand cubic feet in the city, and one dollar and twenty-five cents in the suburbs. Gas from cannel coal being much better than that made from ordinary coal, containing, as it does, more body, a higher rate is charged for the gas. The price received for this quality of gas is one dollar and fifty cents, or six English shillings. The machinery for the manufacturing gas in England is far superior to any in this country, and they also make a saving of nearly twenty per cent on their method of washing or purifying the gas. This table has been computed with great care, merely altering the prices of gas to the rate as afforded at the present time: COMPARATIVE COST OF LIGHT, FROM CANDLES, LAMPS, AND GAS. This table shows that gas is only about one-sixth the price of tallow, or onetwentieth that of wax candles, and one-eighth that of sperm oil. COAL-ITS MECHANICAL POWERS. It is stated by Prof. ROGERS, that each acre of a coal seam in England, four feet in thickness, and yielding one yard net of pure fuel, is equivalent to about 5,000 tons, and possesses, therefore, a reserve of mechanical strength in its fuel equal to the life-labor of more than 1,600 men. Each square mile of one such single coal bed contains eight million tons of fuel, equivalent to one million of men laboring through twenty years of their ripe strength. Assuming, for calculation, that ten million tons out of the present annual products of the British coal mines-namely, sixty-five millions-are applied to the production of mechanical power, then England annually summons to her aid 3,300,000 fresh men, pledged to exert their fullest strength for twenty years. Her actual annual expenditure of power, then, is repesented by 66,000,000 of able-bodied laborers. MAKING CLOTH FIRE PROOF. A patent has lately been secured by F. A. ABEL, of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, England, for a new method of rendering textile fabrics proof against fire. He takes 25 lbs. of sugar of lead, and 15 lbs. of litharge, and boils them for half an hour in 40 gallons of water, when the liquor is allowed to settle. Any quantity of the clear liquid that will suffice to cover the cloth to be operated upon is now taken, and the cloth is immersed and freely saturated in it, then dried in the open air. The cloth is now immersed for about one hour in a hot, and moderately strong solution of the silicate of soda, then thoroughly washed in cold water and dried. By these operations an insoluble silicate is formed within the pores of the cloth, thus making it fire-proof. RAILROAD, CANAL, AND STEAMBOAT STATISTICS. RAILWAY ENTERPRISE IN KANSAS. The Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad Company has recently obtained, by treaty with the Delaware Indians, about 200,000 acres of land. This land is situated between the Missouri and Kansas Rivers. A condition of the cession of this tract of land is, that the company shall construct a railroad from some point on the Missouri River to the western limit of the Delaware Reserve. The contemplated railroad will commence at Leavenworth and be constructed to Lawrence. From the latter place it will be pushed westward to Fort Riley, and thence up the Smoky Hill valley toward Pike's Peak. As a railroad route the Kansas valley possesses this advantage, that it accom. modates and can command the traffic of Utah on the north, and Pike's Peak to the west, and of Mexico and Arizona to the southwest. In this respect it is south to serve as an far superior to the valley of the Arkansas, which is too far avenue for the trade of Utah. In like manner the Platte route is so far north as to be inaccessible from New Mexico and Arizona. It is estimated that there are at present eighteen thousand heavy freight teams engaged in the trade with Utah, Pike's Peak, New Mexico, and Arizona. The amount of freight to the West by these teams is not less than sixty thousand tons. This business is rapidly increasing. When the present slow, cumbersome, and expensive mode of conveyance shall have been supplanted by the railroad, this traffic will assume a magnitude of which we can at present form little conception. The Leavenworth, Pawnee, and Western Railroad Company will be connected with the Hannibal and St. Joseph Railroad, and also with the Pacific Railroad, which is now gradually approaching Kansas City. When these results are obtained, the contemplated road will have a close railroad connection with the two great centers of western trade-Chicago and St. Louis--and will therefore be in communication with every important commercial point from the Lakes on the north to the Gulf on the south. The company intend to push the work vigorously, and in a year from the present time it is anticipated that the road will be opened most of the way to Fort Riley. The route is very level, running along the rich Kansas bottom lands--so level and feasible that in one place there is forty miles of continuous straight line! The treaty which has been made with the Delawares will give this company abundant resources, and capitalists in New York and Boston are ready, as we learn, to invest in the enterprise. The Delawares have still eighty thousand acres of choice lands-enough to supply each man, woman, and child of its tribe with a farm of eighty acres--quite as much, probably, as they will ever need for agricultural purposes. The vigor with which this enterprise is entered upon indicates that, before many twelve months have passed, there will be railway communication with the rapidly growing cities of the central gold regions of the continent. While members of Congress are making speeches about northern, southern, central, and sectional lines, private enterprise is steadily at work, extending from the Atlantic and Pacific sea the iron bonds of union. MINNESOTA RAILWAY SYSTEM. A writer in the Railway Review gives the following sketch of the projected railroads of Minnesota : LENGTHS OF THE LAND-GRANT RAILROADS. PROJECTED LINES. Minnesota & Pacific... ....Main... Stillwater ... Sioux Wood River Miles. 220 400 165 25 79 112 ... Minneapolis & Cedar Valley. Main..... Minneapolis..Iowa line, W. of R. 16............. .Main... Winona {Western boundary of State, 268 ... Root River Junction one mile east of ...Main... La Crescent.. Rochester.... neapolis & Cedar Valley. Main..... Minneapolis { Trausit..... Iowa line, three miles east of Cedar Biver .... .Main... Winona ..... R. line 31-32 of T. 110.... 175 Branch. St. Paul.....St. Paul... 1 .Main... West St. Paul.R. line 31-32 of T. 107.... 114 234 79 114 Total...... ...... ... 845 As yet, however, only about 300 miles of all these projected roads have been granted. Our railway system does not as yet provide for communication with the waters of Superior. A grant of lands was made in 1854 for this purpose, but was soon after repealed. Undoubtedly the most important lines for the commercial development of the country are those which shall connect the waters of Superior and Red River with the waters of the Mississippi, the one furnishing Minnesota an outlet to the Atlantic upon equal terms with Illinois and Wisconsin, and the other furnishing an outlet through Minnesota for the great northwestern valleys of the Winnipeg, with the nucleus of a railroad to the Pacific, the root of a mighty system of inter-oceanic communication. Adding to the land-grant system a road to Superior, we will have a total length of 1,420 miles of road. Of the projected land-grant lines, the main trunk of the Minnesota and Pacific, with its eastern terminus at Stillwater, will drain the commerce of the Upper Mississippi Valley, and develop the fertile plains of the Red River. A branch of this road from Minneapolis will traverse the wide and beautiful champaigus between the Minnesota and Mississippi. The Minnesota Valley Road will complete the fine natural communications of that district with the Mississippi, towards Lake Superior. The Transit, with its terminus at Winona, and the Root River, opposite La Crosse, will give the wheat districts of southern Minnesota, and the new territory of Dacotah, an outlet towards Chicago. All these lines run in an easterly and westerly direction, but the whole system is knit together by the north and south line of the Minneapolis and Cedar Valley, connecting the pine regions of the north, at the Falls of St. Anthony, the principal seat of lumber manufactories, with the naked prairies of the south, and pointing to the natural outlet of Minnesota on Lake Superior. |