South Carolina Enterprises-Prosperity of Columbia.

capitalist as may be reaped in this "Switzerland of America." It will soon be bisected by the great line of railway extending from the British province of New-Brunswick to New-Orleans, and again by a great line from the lakes, passing through the valley of the Ohio to the Atlantic. When these great chains, crossing at this point, shall have thus linked together the various portions of our country, the immense mineral resources of East Tennessee will attract the attention of capitalists, and then will the iron, coal, copper, zinc, lead, timber, water-power, soil, marble, lime, &c., which have been hitherto (and are even yet in many instances) considered as utterly and totally valueless, for want of outlets to markets, become sources of boundless wealth to their fortunate owners.-Knoxville Register.

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rapid and perceptible. Everywhere the busy hum of industry resounds, and the demand for new laborers is increasing.— Carpenters, engineers, masons, blacksmiths, car-builders, stone-cutters, coachmakers, painters, and printers, all find ready employment here, and the completion of the railroads which now diverge from this point in every direction, will but serve to augment the demand for skilful labor of all sorts that now exists here. If these railroads do not greatly benefit Columbia-and it is predicted by the croakers they will injure it-it will form a new feature in the history of railroads that has no counterpart in the past. But away with such croakings! We have not the patience to expose the erroneous arguments of those who forebode evil. Why should we trouble ourselves to prove that which is self-evident. -Who is there that has lately seen Columbia who does not perceive she is going ahead? The gun factory here is now in full operation—it is a building, of handsome proportions, and is situated on the top of a very high hill on the west side of the town, near the residence of Mrs. Taylor. The machinery is all of the most perfect description, the engine an admirable piece of work of Charleston manufacture-and all the parts of the arms they make, rifles, muskets, pistols and sabres, are made within the building in the most perfect manner. The enterprise of Messrs. Boatwright and Glaze deserves to be well rewarded, as doubtless it will be by the large state contract which they have taken.

fine

SOUTH CAROLINA MANUFACTURES.We are indebted to a friend in South Carolina, whose name we do not think we are permitted to use, but who is one of the most enterprising of its citizens, for the following interesting notes of a visit made by him to the interior of the state, and of the improved condition and enlarging industry of the people whom he found there. South Carolina wants many such sons. They are at present little appreciated. In the seven years that we have edited our Review, a less support has been extended by her to it than she has given to a score of northern works. The reason is, there is little taste in South Carolina for industrial statistics, and facts bearing upon general progress. This Mr. Boatwright is the same There is less real disposition to sustain gentleman who, in connection with Mr. anything, originated at home, whatever Pomeroy, has established a coach factheories may be maintained to the con- tory here, where vehicles of elegant trary. As one to the "manor born," design and superior workmanship are we are at liberty to speak thus plainly, produced in considerable numbers, and though we have not tolerance enough to are sold at prices quite as low as those permit another to do so. Will South Ca- of the same finish brought from the rolina ever change in this? Will she ACT with the eloquence and power with which she above all others can speak?Will she?-we hope it-we believe it!

Columbia never before stood on such a vantage ground of prosperity. She needs but a liberal policy on the part of her capitalists and banking institutions to make her prosper beyond example in our state. She is being built up by mechanics and manufacturers, and the prosperity which such men bring to a place is as solid and enduring as it is

North. When, as in this establishment, the mechanics of South Carolina, by skilful management, thus demand the patronage of their fellow citizens without asking any favor in price, they cannot fail to extort an extensive patronage even from a people so prone as we are to preferences of everything foreign.The new fire proof building in the state house square is going up, and is built of native granite of beautiful color and fine quality.

Alongside of those gate-posts of the

capitol, which have been characterized elections biennially impose on them by as" enduring monuments of our shame" means of corrupt practices. Freemen -being of Quincy granite, we have now are here, as with us in Charleston, opensimilar ones of native granite-the mas- ly and shamelessly bartered for, or bought sive iron railing having been extended up like cattle in the market, and whilst from the capitol garden to the corner of the politician perjures their souls, the Bridge-street, and they are of such beau- whisky seller perishes their bodies.tiful appearance as to contrast most tri- But amongst these sons of the desert, umphantly with the northern stone. civilization is creeping in. Oases are May we not hope that the building now springing up everywhere, and by the ingoing up will prove but the beginning of fusion of mechanical enterprise, we may a state-house on such a scale as will yet hope to see these so much to be pitchallenge as much our future admira- ied sous of Carolina rendered virtuous, tion as the existing one does our present happy and useful people. Almost every execration. mechanical establishment in and about Columbia gives employment to some of the sand-hill boys; and in the factory of Dr. Percival, we were pleased to learn, are several energetic and respectable young men, natives of these diggings, who were at work, and exhibiting all the skill and aptness of their more experienced mechanical tutors. But to the factory itself. It is not on a very large scale, but as complete as it can be for all the purposes contemplated by the enterprising and well managing gentleman who projected it. Turning in all its varieties is done here, with the greatest precision and nicety, and with almost incredible rapidity. In the manufacture of chairs, when the circular and vertical saws have answered all the demands tha: may be made on them, there is but little required which the lathe cannot accomplish-and here it is all done to perfection. Chairs of beautiful and varied patterns, some of them original in design, and superior, as affecting comfort and elegance, to any we have ever seen of northern make, are turned off by hundreds. The caning is done here in beautiful style, and some of the female slaves employed in this department, exhibit, after but a brief experience, a facility and quickness really surprising-inasminch as they perform what is regarded amongst the Yankees a full day's task with the greatest ease and in a more perfect manner. We were shown several specimens of caning from different northern factories, executed by first-class operatives, which, upon comparison with those executed by the women here, were found to be most decidedly inferior to the latter. The painting, both plain and ornamental, is also done here in the best style. But now for the most important item-the cost! The chairs are made at a less cost than in any northern factory-even

I must now beg to be indulged in carrying your readers with me on a visit to one of the most complete and promising little manufacturing establishments to be found anywhere either within our state or out of it. I allude to the chair factory and turnery of Dr. Percival, a few miles from the town. It is most charmingly located in the sand hillsa region that knows no unhealthy season. The water power is supplied from a beautiful lake which, like many others hereabouts, finds its source in the sand hills, whence there comes a never failing supply of water. It is as true as it is surprising, of these collections of fresh water, that they are in nowise detrimental to the health of the inhabitants. Issuing out of the white sand beds. a number of minor tributaries concentrate in sand-bottomed beds, and so slight is the deposit of vegetable matter that their beds preserve almost their primitive whiteness. Their surfaces seen but to subserve the cooling exhalation without evolving any of their fatal miasms. which are so generally characteristic of fresh water bayous or lakes, whilst the clear pure and deep mass of water-free of anything harmful, and with bank and bottom of the most inviting character-presents in the heat of summer an invitation to bathing which can hardly be resisted. It is perfectly true that earth presents scarcely a spot where a man may more easily pick up a living than in these same sand hills, and yet the inhabitants for the most part are the most wretchedly inert, and therefore continually stinted people to be found anywhere. This is owing on the one part to the absence of that stimulation which the state is bound to furnish in public schools, and on the other to the heavy drag upon their morals which the state

Schools-Mechanic Arts-Chair-Making.

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now, whilst a part of the labor here is no interest paid on capital lying idle in paid for in this pioneer factory at a rate a lumber investment. Almost every much beyond what it will be procura- particle of the forest tree is used to adble at as soon as a sufficient number of vantage, even the bark being stripped operatives shall have been drilled on from the edges of the sawed pieces to finthe spot. The sophomores and juniors ish the material, now coming so much are studying faithfully, and are forward into use, for rustic arbors and chairs, &c. scholars-ere long we may look for a for gardens. In every department of graduation of seniors, who will immedi- this model factory we perceive indicaately set about the work of pioneering tions of a thorough perception of the art themselves in other parts of the state. of producing the largest representation of Thus it is always that a mechanical mercantile value at the smallest possischool, like a literary one, continually ble outlay of domestic means. The masends forth its graduates to enlighten terials at the very doors cost almost noand benefit society. But we return to thing; the water power, never failing, our assertion, that to make a chair costs works without wages; and the manual here less than any where at the north; labor, costing even now as little as norand how can it be otherwise? The pow- thern labor, may be and will be, under a er which nature supplies in this sand- Percival's skilful and eminently practihill lake is as constant and regular in cal management, made, by the judicious action as it is exhaustless in quantity, intermingling of slave male and female and keeps within its proper metes and labor with that of the native whites, bounds without any restraint of bank or and their imported tutors, cheaper than it dam, for just at its narrow mouth is can possibly be had for in any northern placed the mill-race, which a single flood- locality. Here then, with all the elegate controls. Around, and in sight of ments of cost at the lowest rate, the wares the mill, grows the very kind of trees of this factory would contend successfulthat this manufacture requires for its ly, even for a foreign market, with the materials: oak, bird's-eye and straight- keenest Yankee competition. As to the grained maple, walnut, beach, hickory, home market, the Doctor will have unbirch, elm and China-tree woods, which disputed possession to the extent that he together furnish almost all the materials can supply the various styles called for that even the highest art in chair-ma- in the trade. It costs quite as much to king calls for. The trees are merely bring a Windsor chair from New-Hampstripped of their limbs, and, in the green shire or Massachusetts, (the principal state, without even stripping off the bark, seats of this kind of manufacture,) to Coare put under the saws, which by vari- lumbia, as the original price of it in the ous cuttings soon reduce them to the home market. We will call it precisediminutive shapes of the trade-then by ly the same. Thus it will be seen that, a quick and most perfect process they even admitting the cost of manufacture are seasoned in a few days, and after- here to be as much as at the north, which wards finished up for sale. By this means it is not, they will yield a profit of one the lumber is laid down at the mill at hundred per cent. if sold at the price the smallest possible cost, no expense of which the northern chairs cost laid down large lumber storehouses is incurred, and here.

ART. XIII.-INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS.

LETTER OF HON. JAMES ROBB-NORTH ALABAMA AND SAVANNAH RAIL-ROAD-RAIL-ROADs of

INDIANA AND ILLINOIS.

THE HON. JAMES ROBB, in a letter to which Louisiana is now so much inCol. de Russy, a pamphlet copy of which terested. he has kindly furnished us, argues with ability the question of state subscription to rail-road works, and thus refers to the three great lines of improvement in

The Opelousas or Great Western Rail-road may be constructed from NewOrleans to the Sabine River, at a cost not exceeding fifteen thousand dollars

per mile, estimating iron, materials and descending the Mississippi and Ohio labor at their present cost. The almost unbroken surface of country over which it will be located will render it the cheapest road in the world for the transportation of freight and passengers; and, without being able to estimate its business, which in time will prove of the greatest magnitude, I assume that its expenses will be less, in proportion, than any great road in Europe or America; and that, in any event, it will prove one of great profit to the state and its stockholders. You who know better than I do the country which is to be peopled and improved by means of this great improvement, can best judge of the accuracy of my prediction.