other an almost spontaneous product of the earth, requiring but one species of labor for its production with but moderate ability, and therefore yielding but little profit to him who produces it, and still less to him who sells it. These are the instances which we must look at, and carefully consider, before we begin to turn the forces of government to the extension of our commerce. We must know, before we move in such a matter, upon what ground we move, and never suffer our senses to be deceived by the lying arithmetic of statisticians. When our own wants are supplied, the surplus of our industry is the material of a profitable commerce; but who would send seed corn to mill? The seed corn which we foolishly send to mill, is the raw material of our industry, and the mill is in England. We legislate away our seed corn-we write, speak, and vote it away-we deprive ourselves of every opportunity of wealth, of that valuable material of commerce, that product of the most refined and concentrated industry; concentrating all that the farmer and the artizan can do-we deprive ourselves of this by legislation-by a farrago of closet theory supported by a lying statistic, and the prejudices of the ignorant served up with senatorial sophisms. The commerce of such a country as ours must be a commerce for luxuries, and not for the necessaries of life. It is we who must supply nations inferior to ourselves in fortune and ability, with what they need, and they must give us in exchange the luxuries which we do not need but only desire, and which our superior industry and ability have given us a right to use and to enjoy. We do not mean to say that commerce must be exclusively for luxuries; the products of other climates: drugs, medicines, dye-stuffs, peculiar kinds of food which grow only in the tropics, certain valuable metals, and some manufactures, of an undesirable character to be produced at home; in short, a vast variety of articles, not properly luxuries, will always furnish out a vast commerce, and open a market for the products of our own industry. It appears from all that has been presented to our view in the course of this argument, that the legislation of a country like ours should be directed not to the production of an unprofitable surplus of raw material, liable at any moment to be thrown back upon its producers, but to the introduction and the building up of as many new species of industry as possible, in order that no one department may be overdone, and that a surplus may be produced that can be made the staples of a truly safe and valuable commerce. XI. CALIFORNIA. some six months ago, has been sold at San Francisco for $15,000. At the so called California prices, the same vessel should have brought $100,000. One would think that the mere timber would have brought more money than was given for the vessel. Startling as the conclusion may appear, we are compelled to admit that California is not destined to have a commerce. Owners of property in California will not invest money in shipping. That department of commerce which is called shipping interest, may be said in California to have no exist It is beginning to be predicted by the more observing class of speculators, that a commercial catastrophe awaits those who are building upon expectations raised by the gold of California. We have several times before alluded to the state of things in that country, and have predicted the defeat of all extravagant expectations. The time has not yet come, but it is probably not far distant. The first symptom of its approach which we have to notice, is the fall in the price of provisions, of clothing, and of shipping, in the harbor of California. We learn that the fine ship ❘ence. Edward Everett, which sailed from Boston The population of California being, as therefore, pay for every thing in gold.* Gold, being the largest commodity in quantity, is cheapened by its own abundance; and $500 will be found insufficient for the support of a single adult individual living by provisions and clothes brought to him across the ocean. yet, a small one, not exceeding that of a of 50,000 persons, living at an expense of third rate city, a very moderate coasting something more than $500 a year. Calitrade from South America and the Sand-fornia produces nothing but gold; it must wich Islands, and especially from Oregon, will easily supply it with provisions. A single manufacturing village in New England could furnish it with clothing. The commerce in luxuries will never be large, until its population becomes domestic and thriving. The market is already overstocked with all the necessaries, and many of the luxuries, of life. The prices of many of these commodities has already fallen below that which they bear in New York, which, considering the prodigious cheapness of gold, shows an alarming depreciation. When these effects come to be generally felt and known, commerce will gradually withdraw itself from the ports of California, and commodities will have a permanent value, measured by the necessities of the population, the immediate presence of the precious metals, the monopoly of the trade, which must fall into the hands of a few adventurers, and the character of the population which, in all gold countries, will be more or less reckless and unthrifty. When the more superficial diggings are exhausted, and it becomes necessary for several men to combine for the employment of labor and capital in the opening of deep mines, a result which may be expected in a few years, it will be found that the price of labor, always severe in mining, will bring the profits of such adventurers within very moderate limits. Expensive machinery will have to be constructed and transported across the Isthmus, or carried about Cape Horn; salaried gold hunters, engineers, and miners, will have to be employed at a great expense; constant failures, and a vast waste of labor, will strike away a large proportion of the profits. In time, a share in a gold company in California, will become fancy stock in Wall street. Long before this time the population, instead of increasing, may be expected to diminish, having first reached its maxi mum. It is certain that far more has been taken to California in the shape of clothing, shipping, provisions, luxuries, and money, than has, as yet, been brought out of it in the shape of gold. If a California outfit cost $500, or thereabouts, one hundred men, going to California, take with them $50,000; this is $50,000 and the labor and enterprise of an hundred men taken directly out of the country where they belong and which they enrich, and transported to California. $50,000, and the labor of an hundred men, skillfully employed in manufactures, or farming, in a civilized community, would double itself in a few years, besides providing subsistence for an hundred families, creating rich farms and a thriving village, and securing to its owners and employers all the moral and physical advantages and comforts of civilization. Let us see now how this same money and labor are employed in California. There is no combination in California; each man is for himself; combination has been found to be impossible. Two or three may combine together to work at a digging, or to speculate in lands, but there can be no companies, no joint enterprises, for the advantage of a number. Of the hundred men who have taken each a capital of $500, and of which they have expended $400 before they arrive in California, and in such a way that it creates nothing, yields nothing for themselves or for their country, but is literally thrown into the sea, a third, perhaps, or more likely a fourth, will find themselves strong enough and possessed of sufficient fortitude to engage in mining-a species of toil which is compared only to stone breaking, well digging, or the laying of heavy walls. Twenty-five of the hundred have engaged in this terrible labor, Of the remaining seventy Let us suppose that the actual proceeds of the mines in California amount to about $2,000,000 monthly-$24,000,000 annually; if the whole sum is expended in procuring food and clothing, it will pay, from year to year, the expenses of a population | say to that? * What have "balance of trade" theorists to five, perhaps one half will assist their more | community of an hundred adult persons in a civilized state, at the rate of $500 a year. I have taken small numbers for this ideal estimate, larger numbers would not serve better to show the ratios. laborious brethren as carriers, tool makers, coiners, house builders, and the like occupations. They must be paid very liberally. They are the friends and the countrymen of the miners, and their labor is worth more than that of foreigners. The twenty-five men who engaged in mining, the thirty or forty who engaged in other labor, and the thirty or forty who wander about after their arrival as marauders, idlers, or beggars, have all to be supported. The gold diggers must support all these. Such is the law of communities. No man would be permitted to starve or go naked in so liberal a country as California, where gold is so abundant. Every man, too, will do something, under the pretext of earning his bread. They will dig a little, work aed; that many have perished of malaria little, trade a little, just enough to keep body and soul together. They will employ their best abilities in the art of living easy upon the industry of others. The twenty-five gold diggers have to dig gold enough among them, not only for their own support, but, whatever may be their own intentions, for the support of the remaining seventy-five, who are a part of the same community. To get back their first expenses, and that of their comrades, they have to dig, in the course of the year, $50,000 worth of gold, beside enough to pay their current expenses. But they can work during only one half the year. They have to dig more than $8,200 the month, for six consecutive months; but as only one half of them will more than support themselves during that time, the remainder (a large proportion) being the lucky ones, these lucky ones must clear $8,200 the month, over and above their expenses, to pay costs, and replace the capital invested; for it must never be forgotten that California produces nothing but gold. Unless gold is produced, nothing is produced, and the money expended in and upon the country is lost. In six months twelve men have earned about $50,000. This money is to be divided between them, but not equally; the least of the lucky ones will have but $1,000 of this money, and the most lucky will have perhaps $20,000. During the year expended in the replacement of the original $50,000, these twelve men will have dug gold enough, beside all this, to support a The result of all this is that the production of $50,000 of clear gain in California, requires the expenditure and sinking of $100,000; that in this process an available capital of $50,000, and the labor of an hundred men-civilized and educated men-is withdrawn from the community where they were born, and to which they belong; that a property, at first equally distributed among an hundred persons, is concentrated in the hands of a few persons, that the morals and manners of the great majority are impaired, or quite ruin and hard labor, who would otherwise have lived to a good old age; that some have become gamblers and sots; that many have given up excellent business and good hopes, to engage in an unprofitable and dangerous adventure; and finally, that of those who successfully bring home fortune from beyond the seas, suffering the intoxication of too sudden a success, and by too desperate a means, the greater part will soon lose unluckily at home, what they have luckily got abroad; to say that two out of the original hundred will certainly benefit themselves and others by the adventure, is saying more than is prudent. Such, when they come to be written, will be found to be the average history of California adventure. It is true, immense fortunes have been made, and a few who went there poor have come back rich, notwithstanding all of which we still aver that such in future will be found to be the history of California adventures. We have said that California can never have a commerce; it is a gold producing country; it will by and by become, to a certain extent, agricultural, and possibly a few manufactures may be introduced; but, for the first, it cannot enter into competition with Oregon or Chili; nor for the second with the United States and England. There is no reason to believe, that for many ages, California will export manufactures or agricultural products; the population will consequently consist almost exclusively of miners and those who employ them; it will, therefore, be a limited population; it will not grow beyond the necessity created by the operation of capitalists in its mining regions; its property will be owned chiefly by persons residing in England and in the United States; they will send money and machinery, and receive gold in return. The commerce of Benecia and San Francisco will consequently be extremely limited. Commerce is centered in a region by its becoming either a mart for the exchange of commodities, like Samaracand or New York; or by its being like Babylon or Boston, a centre for the production of manufactures. The city of Babylon, in which at one period, the trade of the East was concentrated, was, at the epoch of its greatest glory, nothing more than an assemblage of manufacturing villages, surrounded by a range of artificial hills, called walls, to shut out the neighboring barbarians. The city of Boston owes its commercial importance, in great part, to its being the trading centre of manufacturing interests in New England. It is impossible, in the nature of things, that California should become a trading centre, as it neither produces anything to create a commerce, or to ensure a steady growth of population. For the same reason it can never become a port of deposit or of exchange. The badness of its harbors will alone prevent that result. Let us now make enquiry of the benefits, real or imagined, which are to be secured to this country by the addition of California. That these benefits are to arise from the addition of a certain amount of gold coin to the circulation of the entire world, no one will perhaps pretend. The value of the precious metals is diminished as their quantity increases; to have that quantity largely increased would be an inconvenience, as it would add nothing to the wealth of the world; nothing to the comforts of life, and would disturb the coinage of governments. The benefit to be derived from the finding of gold consists in the good fortune of those few lucky individuals who make fortunes by the adventure. The capital hitherto invested, and effectually sunk and annihilated, far exceeds the largest anticipated returns. On the whole, regarded as a commercial speeulation in which the entire country is interested, California has already cost much more than it is worth, both in the war that was made for it, and in the money and labor that has been carried into it. As an investment of labor and capital it is already a total failure. But if California can never become a seat of trade, and is, as a speculation, in itself unprofitable; if its effect is to demoralize the entire community by creating an unnatural thirst for gold, and a love of foreign adventure, if it is to continue to withdraw capital, labor, and talent, the ready capital, the free labor, and the adventurous talent of the hardiest portion of our population from fields where they are most needed, and where their value is alone appreciated, with what favor can the public economist regard this new acquisition of a gold region? The most sanguine calculators have not yet shown that the product of the country in precious metals will sustain its population, or pay the cost of its purchase and colonization. These then, we conceive, are to be the advantages which are to accrue to us as a nation by the conquest of California, and the discovery of its placers. First, it has directed our attention upon the western borders of our continent; it has already drawn us nearer in thought, to the Asiatic side of the globe; it has opened the way for a commerce with Asia; it has created a necessity for the establishment of a free and rapid communication between the Atlantic and the Pacific; it has brought us nearer, by the space of several centuries, to our ultimate destiny as the civilizers, and perhaps masters of Asia. The existence of the state of California on the shore of the Pacific, has made it necessary for us to establish a communication between the two sides of the continent. When this communication is established, affairs in California will take another turn; a railroad will pass from the Mississippi River perhaps to the Columbia. At Puget Sound, if we prophecy truly, there will be established an entrepot for the commerce between the United States and Asia; the gold of California will pass first into Oregon before it is distributed to the East and West. Or if it is resolved that the great international railroad shall go to California first, still we may predict for it the same consequences, that it will become a route of commercial enterprise between America and Asia. California will then indeed become a grand commercial centre, but she will continue to be insignificant as a state; and for the reason that she produces nothing, or rather produces nothing but gold, of all products the least valuable, the least profitable, the least beneficial to the world. Should Oregon, on the other hand, be made the terminus of the new route, there will be added to the United States a country well fitted for every purpose of agriculture and manufacture, of vast extent, free from the remotest danger of invasion, of a temperate climate, and lying convenient to the ocean, towards which already a stream of population is moving, which must soon convert it from a wilderness to a wealthy and prosperous state, but whose prosperity will be most seriously retarded should the great road be turned away from it, and directed upon the barren mountains and unprofitable plains of California. With such a route as is contemplated, the products of Oregon will within a century far exceed a dozen Californias; nor will those, meanwhile, of California decline in consequence, since nothing is more needed to the prosperity of that state than the immediate neighborhood and intercourse of such a population as that which will be in Oregon. Let not the Californian think me his enemy. The fewer the better in that country for those who are there. J. D. W. |