agricultural in value, nor is that proportion likely to be exceeded. Coal, iron and many other minerals will be produced in ever-increasing quantity, but the gifts of the soil are very sure to grow in equal ratio. All the precious metals produced in the United States since 1848 have been estimated at $1,500,000,000, or about one half the agricultural income of a single year. The best gold mine is the soil of the rich and beautiful Valley.

Manufactures furnish a large class of growing industries which produce enormous results. They, however, use the materials of the mines and the products of the soil which do not nearly double in value, on the average, in the change they undergo. The value of manufactured articles, in 1870, was $4,230,000,000; of this the crude material was worth $2,480,000,000; leaving $1,740,000,000 of value added as the true product of manufacture. As that estimate was made in a period of exceptional prosperity, of money inflation and high prices, we may probably be justified in considering the annual average for the decade following 1870 as $1,500,000,000-not greatly exceeding one half the results of agriculture.

In the new era, so full of enthusiastic enterprise, that followed the stress and strain of the civil war, American genius and skill proved themselves, in the line they followed, superior to the long and minute training of the European art san; and the generous soil, with machinery and railroads to reduce the costs of production and transportation, enabled America to greatly enlarge her trade with Europe. The increase of exports, in the ten years following 1868, over the previous decade, was one hundred and fifty-three per cent; and of the $680,680,000 of entire export in the last year of this decade $592,470,000 were agricultural products, leaving less than $90,000,000 as the export of manufactures and other materials, or less than fifteen per cent. Yet, manufactures are so largely supplying our own country that less and less are imported every year.

CHAPTER XII.

COMMERCE ON THE RIVERS AND LAKES.

No large region in the world has been so favored as the Mississippi Valley in natural commercial highways except the countries lying about the Mediterranean sea. There the character of the outlines, the relations of the regions to each other, and the general peculiarities of the separate countries, in themselves, indicated that it was the office of the water highway that linked them together to promote the mutual intercourse of numerous small nations and thereby favor their progress in civilization. It separated them as well as joined them; it formed a community of nationalities which were to learn from and stimulate each other. It did not favor the formation of a single nation out of the whole. Contact could not be close, intimate and permanent enough for that. Yet, the commerce of the great sea, bordered by three continents, brought about the unity and progress from permanent diversity of elements that the times and the interests of humanity demanded.

The connections instituted by the water highways of the great Valley tended to unify the human development and its material progress. The united river system, the level surfaces and gentle slopes made it impossible to separate the interests of one section from those of others or allow isolation. They must mingle as do their waters. The great interior seas of the northern border, with their eastern outlet, pointed significantly to community of interests and close relations with the Atlantic Slope, and to commerce with Europe. The whole character of the northern basin of the Valley both adapted it to such relations and invited the immigration of the vigorous nations of the temperate climate. It offered them the occupations,

the climate and the products with which they were most familiar, which promised them the largest degree of comfort and the greatest measure of prosperity. That which had been proposed by nature did not fail to be realized in history; the isolation produced by distance and intervening wildness gave the desired continental, or peculiar American, tone to the population by the vigor with which this fine region reacted on the pioneers; and eastern relations then became the predominant ones with the upper Valley. After the Erie and Welland canals had opened the channels to Atlantic ports commerce from the upper Ohio and the Northwest flowed powerfully in that direction, and the railroads were afterward a marvelous success because it was the natural direction.

This course of the commerce of the most fertile and temperate part of the Valley weakened relations with the southern basin remarkably. It left the South, with its unthrifty labor system, almost to itself. Had Florida been left off the continent the comparative fate of New York and New Orleans would have been different; and a similar result--perhaps a more significant one-would have followed had the Alleghanies continued their full development through New York and confined the waterways of the northern Valley to outlets by the Mississippi River.

Thus, the Valley has two parts with an important difference in their relations. Historical events, or the great industrial growth of the free States, developed the Northwest very much sooner than the lower, or central, Valley. Its value was apparent, from the first, as the most promising field of labor mankind had yet inherited, and the thriftiest and most intelligently industrious of the nations at once set to work to make the most of it. The railroad came to the help of steam at the right time and pushed its growth to the most remarkable height.

But the course of the streams and the relations produced by the Gulf, thrown into shade for the time, must assert their

TRANSPORTATION ON THE LAKES AND RIVERS.

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power sooner or later. It was the misfortune of the Southern Confederacy and its labor system that the lake system and the railroads rendered the upper Valley, with its great preponderance of growth on the Northeast, tolerably independent of the Mississippi and the Gulf. Had the lower Valley, at that time, opened the sources of her power and wealth as fully as the upper the result must have been more or less different. The misfortune of having slavery in the South, and the want of development in the countries with which the Gulf naturally associated it, left it weak in population and resources. Its hour has not, even yet, come, and the commerce of the rivers has given but a faint prophecy of its destiny. It is only a question of time, however, which the force of natural relations renders absolutely certain.

The great and sudden development of the railroad system broke in upon the slow movement that, between 1804 and 1850, was pushing forward the interests of the lower Valley and deferred its rise to its due prominence at least half a century. The general data of commerce on the lakes and rivers for different periods are very expressive.

The whole number of steamboats built for the western and southern rivers, from 1819 to 1829, included a capacity of 56,000 tons. In 1817, all the boats then floating the trade of the Ohio were estimated to have a capacity of 2,000 tons annually. The capacity must have been 70,000 in 1830. The trade on the Great Lakes was chiefly connected with furs or the transport of goods for Indian traders, prior to 1825, when the Erie canal opened a channel for the transit of commerce to the Hudson River. About 20,000 tons of carrying capacity was then employed for some years, chiefly in the transport of emigrants and their goods to the regions near the lakes. The commerce of the lakes and canals began, after 1835, to grow rapidly. The Ohio had been connected, by two canals across the State of that name, with Lake Erie. By 1840 the State of Ohio exported, by canals and Lake Erie, nearly

4,000,000 bushels of wheat, and in 1850 near 12,000,000 bushels. In 1842 the steamboat tonnage of the lakes and rivers was 126,000, and including flatboats, barges and sailing vessels about 150,000. The steam marine of the lakes and rivers, in 1851, was reported at 765 vessels, with a tonnage capacity of 204,725. The ocean coast (Atlantic and Gulf) steam marine at this time comprised 625 vessels, of 212,500 tonnage capacity. The values transported on the lakes in 1851 were, by careful estimate for that year, stated at $326,590,000. Estimates for the trade of the rivers of the Valley, for 1850, made it amount to $350,000,000. This would give the entire amount of lake and river trade, in 1851, at very near $700,000,000.

As no absolutely accurate figures were obtainable, in those days, the amount of values transported can only be approximated. The perfectly free and unembarrassed internal commerce of this happy region enjoys a rare immunity from government interference. The amount of commercial exchanges has been made note of, however, by boards of trade in later times, and by records of tonnage transported on railroads. Values of property are, however, matters of estimate still,although extended experience has given them fair accuracy. At this time railroads entered largely into internal commerce and quite changed the fate of waterways-both river

and lake.

In 1876, the amount of property annually transported on railroads in the United States was estimated at $10,000,000,000; that conveyed in vessels on the lakes and rivers at $750,000,000; and on canals at $500,000,000; which carries up the sum of the values transported on these internal public highway's to $11,250,000,000.

This intimates that, on the whole, the commerce of the rivers and lakes continued about the same for twenty-five years; the entire immense gain during that time being absorbed by the railroad system. For this there were many