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JOURNAL OF BANKING, CURRENCY, AND FINANCE.

Boston Valuation.-Bank of the State of Indiana...
Banks of Wisconsin.-The Clearing-house.

463

464

City Weekly Bank Returns-Banks of New York, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Pittsburg, St. Louis, Providence...

465

The Failures in the Leather Trade...

465

Finances of the Sandwich Islands.-Banking in New South Wales...

470

Bank of France

471

Portsmouth.-New York Assay-office...

472

Finances of Europe and America.-Savings Banks of New Hampshire.
Austrian Finances.-Chilian Mint-New Mines..

473

474

Ohio Valuation.-Banks of Illinois.-Banks of Missouri.-Brooklyn Finances......

475

STATISTICS OF TRADE AND COMMERCE.

Trade of the Northwest..

476

Lake Vessels on the Ocean.-Commerce of New Orleans..
Commerce of Mobile.-Trade of the Sandwich Islands...
Spain-Its Trade and Agriculture..

477

450

481

482

Export of Breadstuffs from the United States to Great Britain and Ireland

JOURNAL OF INSURANCE.

Connecticut Insurance Law....

Fire Insurance Dividends.....

NAUTICAL

INTELLIGENCE.

Minot's Ledge, Entrance to Boston Bay.-The Anvil Rock, Cape Point.
Discontinuance of a Lighthouse....

Marine Losses.-Loss on Western Waters

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Frauds in Trade.-Industry in Jamaica.-Weight of Various Articles of Produce.............

518

519

5:20

521

522

523

524

525

526

THE BOOK TRADE.

Notices of new Books or new Editions....

.....527-528

HUNT'S

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE

AND

COMMERCIAL REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1860.

Art. I.-WHEAT TRADE-FOREIGN DEMAND.

THE accounts that reach us from Europe indicate that a very considerable demand for breadstuffs may spring up before the close of the harvest year now just opened. The crops of France and England are represented as in great jeopardy from the continued rain that already had done much damage, and large orders for grain are said to have been sent to America and the Black Sea. One thing is to be kept in mind, however, in reading English accounts in relation to the harvests: it is that the actual and probable wants are always systematically exaggerated; for the reason that the greater the supplies that can be induced to direct themselves towards England the more chance have they to get cheap food at the expense of the growers. Alarm and exaggeration are employed to lower the prices of grain. The enormous revulsion and failures of 1847-8 are still fresh in the public mind. Prices rose on false reports until the price had reached 120s. in June. It was then discovered that the supplies were abundant, and a rapid fall involved hundreds of failures. The extent of the present probable wants is not to be judged of from clamor. In relation to the harvests of France, a significant fact is that an imperial decree had been issued at the close of August opening the French ports for the admission, duty free, of all kinds of foreign grain and flour, irrespective of flag. Vessels with breadstuffs will be exempt from tonnage dues. The government has the means of being well informed, and this movement, after the restoration of the sliding scale dating one year since, has a practical appearance.

The potatoes are represented as showing more disastrous signs than in any year since the famine of 1847. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the dependence upon the potato is not now anything like so general as it then was. The multitudes of people who in Ireland then subsisted only upon the products of their little patches, and were possessed of no capital to purchase a substitute when that crop failed, have disappeared by migration and starvation, and a better class of cultivators have more

diversified means of dependence. The general growth of the countries of Great Britain and France require more food, not only in the proportion of greater actual numbers, but in the increase of food consumers in proportion to food producers. The last census of France shows a great concentration in the cities at the expense of the provinces, and even in these last the manufacturing population increases at the expense of the agriculturists. It is also the case that the general wealth of the people has improved. Thus three prominent causes conspire to create a larger demand for food:-1st, greater numbers; 2d, greater relative town and city population; 3d, more means to purchase food. This has been the direction of events since the last famine of 1847, under the spur of gold discoveries and speculation. The production of food has no doubt been accelerated in some degree, but owing to the improved means of transportation, and the events which have opened broader sources of supply in the Black Sea and Egypt, the prices have not been maintained at rates which encourage the grower. If we were to adopt Adam Smith's standard of prices, and scan that of wheat since the gold discoveries, we should not detect any fall in the value of gold. On the other hand, the figures would indicate a rise in its value, since food has been, on a whole, cheaper. Hence the grower of grain has been less encouraged than the food consumers. The reason is no doubt that, as we have intimated, the means of transportation by rail and boats have been such as to equalize the grain production of all Europe, in something the same manner that the railroads and canals of the United States, by cheapening transportation, equalize the prices of grain between the valleys of the Hudson, the Ohio, and the Mississippi. The long, expensive, and tedious progress of wheat from the interior of Poland and the Danube provinces is now comparatively changed for cheap and prompt delivery. More grain has thus been brought into the service of Western Europe, and the rates there received relatively less. This fact has been doubtless one cause of the growth of French cities, since the rude systems of agriculture there pursued could not stand this influx, causing distressed agriculturists to seek the cities and factories for support. It is also the case that the French trade in grain fluctuates more than any other. This is apparent in the following table:

IMPORT AND EXPORT OF WHEAT INTO AND FROM FRANCE AND THE UNITED STATES, AND IMPORT OF WHEAT AND WHEAT FLOUR INTO GREAT BRITAIN.

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Wheat. Bush. 16,624,422

Wheat.

Bush.

3,467,833

Wheat. Bush. 1,613,795

1846....... 3,198,876

Flour.

Bbls 2,289,476

1,026,725 2,202,335 2,694,510 2,799,339

2,101,206 3,890,141 2,920,918

1847....... 6,329,058 21,251,232 28,754,658 4,154,427 4,399,951 4,382,496 1848..... 1,765,475 20,752,104 4,494,199 8,576,546 2,034,704 2,119,083 8,849,830 82,763,024 1,364,217 5,002,152 1,527,534 2,108,013 3,855,059 80,036,745 2,772,081 6,919,398 608,661 1,385,448 5,314,414 40,496,072 2,003,943 6,827,735 3,889,583 25,551,136 4,126,640 4,014,107 4,646,400 35,595,512 10,103,107 3,646,505 26,448,816 18,972,988 1,904,224 21,342,608 12,165,022 3,970,100 32,582,664 28,769,782 2,178,148 27,503,656 15,865,574 1,344,063 14,570,331 8,712,053 3,860,764 37,175,471 8,927,380 19,336,320 8,926,196 3,512,169 3,330,770 32,008,298 3,002,016 2,431,828 8,000,000 3,000,000

1849..

1850..

1851....

1852..

1853..

1854...

1855..

1856....

1857.....

1858.....

1859......

...

.....

1860, 6 mos. 1,429,536 11,155,556

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In these returns it is to be considered that the year in Great Britain and France ends December 31, and in the United States, June 30.

The year of the largest import of flour into Great Britain was 1847; but in 1851 the aggregate of wheat, in flour and grain, reached the maximum. The quantities of corn and other grain imported into Great Britain have varied considerably. In 1847 the quantity was 7,448,107 qrs., or 59,584,856 bushels. Of that quantity one-third came from the United States. The quantity required has never been so large since. France was a large importer of wheat in those years-'46 and '47. The demand of those two countries upon the rest of the world was, it appears, 99,849,272 bushels-a quantity nearly equal to the whole crops of the United States. The States of Belgium and Holland were also short, and while all the navigation laws were suspended to give perfect freedom for the transportation of grain, and some national vessels were used to transport it, the prices of freight rose immensely. Flour to Liverpool, from New York, paid $2 per bbl., and grain 50 cents per bushel. While these enormous supplies were required, and prices that rose at one time to 120s. per quarter were paid, the United States supplied but a very unimportant proportion of the whole amount-that is to say, about 44,000,000 bushels. From 1848 to 1852 France was an exporter of wheat. The demand upon the markets of the world was thereby diminished, and the supply increased. The crop of 1852 again failed in France, and from that date, through the Russian war, she was again a large importer. In the four years ending with 1857 she bought 85,800,000 bushels of wheat, and England bought 184,000,000 in the same time, or together, 269,800,000 bushels, of which the United States supplied 67,700,000 bushels, or 25 per cent. In all that period, in the United States the consumption of food was very active, because the building of railroads was pursued to an extent that absorbed $600,000,000 of capital; land speculations were rife; 2,000,000 emigrants arrived in the country, and great numbers moved from East to West on the new lands that were to be soon covered with the growing railroads. These causes produced such a demand for food at the door of the growers as to leave but little surplus to send East, and the quantities that did go abroad could be spared only at very high prices. We have in those causes a reason that the United States, a peculiarly agricultural country, have not yet taken their rank as a supplier of food for Europe. In the years of large demand heretofore the means of transportation did not exist. In the last three years, when the means did exist, the demand was slack. The moment has now apparently arrived when the demand is to take place in face of the most extensive means of meeting it. The Western crops are represented as so large as to give rise to fears that it may be overdone, and that the demand, great as it may be from Europe, will not suffice to raise prices, in face of such overwhelming supplies, to a level that will pay for the distant transportation. In other words, that the demand will be met before the most remote States can get their supplies to hand.

If we look back to the famine of 1847, we find that the Erie Canal and the lines of roads that now form the New York Central were the only through communications to the lakes. They were the only means of freight transportation, and the law did not allow the railroad to carry freight until 1850. The basin of the great lakes was fed only by the Ohio canals at Toledo and Cleveland. The Indiana-which canal did

not operate the Illinois Canal was not then available, and there were no railroads to drain the produce of the interior to the ports. The great rivers carried down supplies to New Orleans, and food found its way abroad thence. The lakes were supplied with a very moderate amount of sail tonnage, and the expense of transportation from Chicago to New York was very great.

The great famine demand began in 1846. At the close of July, in that year, the price of flour in New York was $4, and the rate rose steadily until it reached $9 12 per barrel. The course of the New York market was, monthly, as follows :-

EXPORTS OF BREADSTUFFS FROM NEW YORK IN 1846-7, WITH THE PRICE OF FLOUR AND FREIGHTS TO LIVERPOOL AT THE CLOSE OF EACH MONTH.

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The quantities received at tide-water during this period, viz., from July 31, 1846, to August 1, 1847, were as follows:

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The highest freights were obtained in February, when the cotton shipments were most pressing, and just at the opening of canal navigation. The Erie Canal then being almost the only channel of transportation from the West, and it was so overburdened with business that it cost $1 25 to transport a barrel of flour from Buffalo to Albany. The supplies from New Orleans at New York were not much increased, because large quantities went thence direct to Great Britain and France, as fol lows:

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The Erie Canal and the Mississippi River were in that year the only outlets for the produce of the West. It followed that, although the European demand raised prices high in New York and New Orleans, yet the cost of transportation absorbed so large an amount of the proceeds, that the producer did not benefit to that degree which would have stimulated large production, although it did not fail to send forward every disposable bushel.

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