The United States in Prophecy

"WITH wool, as with cotton, the manufacture into cloth was confined to households, for home use, until near the close of the last century. At the time of Hamilton's report there was only one woolen-mill in the United States. It was at Hartford, Connecticut. In it were made cloths and cassimeres. Now woolen factories may be found in almost every State in the Union, turning out annually the finest cloths, cassimeres, flannels, carpets, and every variety of goods made of wool. In this business, as in cotton, Massachusetts has taken the lead. The value of manufactured woolens in the United States, at the close of the civil war, was estimated at about $60,000,000. The supply of wool in the United States has never been equal to the demand.

"The smelting of iron ore, and the manufacture of iron, has become an immense business in our country. The development of ore deposits, and of coal used in smelting, are among the marvels of our history. English navigation laws discouraged iron manufacture in the colonies. Only blast-furnaces for making pig-iron were allowed. This product was nearly all sent to England in exchange for manufactured articles; and the whole amount of such exportation, at the beginning of the old war of independence, was less than 8,000 tons annually.

"Now iron is manufactured in our country in every form from a nail to a locomotive. A vast number of machines have been invented for carrying on these manufactures; and the products in cutlery, fire-arms, railway materials, and machinery of every kind, employ vast numbers of men and a great amount of capital. Our locomotive builders are regarded as the best in the world; and no nation on the globe can compete with us in the construction of steam-boats of every kind, from the ironclad war steamer to the harbor tug.

"The manufacture of paper is a very large item in the business of our country. At the close of the Revolution there were only three mills in the United States. At the beginning of the war a demand sprung up, and Wilcox, in his mill near Philadelphia, made the first writing-paper produced in this country. He manufactured the thick, coarse paper on which the continental money was printed. So early as 1794 the business had so increased that there were in Pennsylvania alone forty-eight paper-mills. There has been a steady increase in the business ever since. Within the last twenty-five years that increase has been enormous, and yet not sufficient to meet the demand. Improvements in printing presses have cheapened the production of books and newspapers, and the circulation of these has greatly increased. It is estimated that the amount of paper now manufactured annually in the United States for these, for paper-hangings, and for wrapping paper, is full 800,000,000 pounds. The supply of raw material here has not been equal to the demand, and rags to the value of about $2,000,000 in a year have been imported.

"The manufacture of ships, carriages, wagons, clocks and watches, pins, leather, glass, India-rubber, silk, wood, sewing-machines, and a variety of other things wholly unknown or feebly carried on a hundred years ago, now flourish, and form very important items in our domestic commerce. The sewing-machine is an American invention, and the first really practical one was first offered to the public by Elias Howe, Jr., about thirty years ago. A patent had been obtained for one five years before. Great improvements have been made, and now a very extensive business in the manufacture and sale of sewing-machines is carried on by different companies, employing a large amount of capital and costly machinery, and a great number of persons.

"The mining interests of the United States have become an eminent part of the national wealth. The extraction of lead, iron, copper, and the precious metals, and coal from the bosom of the earth, is a business that has almost wholly grown up within the last hundred years. In 1754 a lead mine was worked in South-western Virginia; and in 1778, Dubuque, a French miner, worked lead ore deposits on the western bank of the Upper Mississippi. The Jesuit missionaries discovered copper in the Lake Superior region more than two hundred years ago, and that remains the chief source of our native copper ore. That metal is produced in smaller quantities in other States, chiefly in the West and South-west.

"In 1848, gold was discovered on the American fork of the Sacramento river in California, and soon afterward elsewhere in that region. A gold fever seized the people of the United States, and thousands rushed to California in search of the precious metals. Within a year from the discovery, nearly 50,000 people were there. Less than five years afterward California, in one year, sent to the United States mint full $40,000,000 in gold. Its entire gold product to this time is estimated at more than $800,000,000. Overall the far Western States and Territories the precious metals—gold and silver—seem to be scattered in profusion, and the amount of mineral wealth yet to be discovered there seems to be incalculable. Our coal fields seem to be inexhaustible; and out of the bosom of the earth, in portions of our country, flow millions of barrels annually of petroleum or rock oil, affording the cheapest illuminating material in the world.

"Mineral coal was first discovered and used in Pennsylvania at the period of the Revolution. A boat load was sent down the Susquehanna from Wilkesbarre for the use of the Continental works at Carlisle. But it was not much used before the war of 1812; and the regular business of mining this fuel did not become a part of the commerce of the country before the year 1820, when 365 tons were sent to Philadelphia. At the present time the amount of coal sent to market from the American mines, of all kinds, is equal to full 15,000,000 tons annually.

"At the close of the war the British government refused to enter into commercial relations with the United States government, believing that the weak league of States would soon be dissolved; but when a vigorous national government was formed in 1789, Great Britain, for the first, sent a resident minister to our government, and entered into a commercial arrangement with us. Meanwhile a brisk trade had sprung up between the Colonies and Great Britain, as well as with other countries. From 1784 to 1790 the exports from the United States to Great Britain amounted to $33,000,000, and the imports from Great Britain to $87,000,000. At the same time several new and important branches of industry had appeared, and flourished with great rapidity.

"From that time the expansion of American commerce was marvelous, in spite of the checks it received from British jealousy, wars, piracies in the Mediterranean Sea and elsewhere, and the effects of embargoes. The tonnage of American ships, which, in 1789, was 201,562, was in 1870 more than 7,000,000. The exports from the United States in 1870 amounted to about $464,000,000, and the imports to about $395,000,000 in gold.

"The domestic commerce of the United States is immense. A vast sea-coast line, great lakes, large rivers, and many canals, afford scope for interstate commerce and with adjoining countries, not equalled by those of any nation. The canal and railway systems in the United States are the product chiefly of the present century. So also is navigation by steam, on which river commerce chiefly relies for transportation. This was begun in the year 1807. The first canals made in this country were two short ones, for a water passage around the South Hadley and Montague Falls, in Massachusetts. These were constructed in 1792. At about the same time the Inland Lock Navigation Companies, in the State of New York, began their work. The Middlesex Canal, connecting Lowell with Boston harbor, was completed in 1808, and the great Erie Canal, 363 miles in length, was finished in 1825, at a cost of almost $8,000,000. The aggregate length of canals built in the United States is 3,200 miles.

"The first railway built in the United States was one three miles in length, that connected the granite quarries at Quincy, Massachusetts, with the Neponset River. It was completed in 1827; horse-power was used. The first use of a locomotive in this country was in 1829, when one was put upon a railway that connected the coal mines of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company with Honesdale. Now railways form a thick network all over the United States east of the Mississippi, and are rapidly spreading over the States and Territories beyond, to the Pacific Ocean. To these facilities for commercial operations, must be added the Electro-Magnetic Telegraph, an American invention, as a method of transmitting intelligence, and giving warning signals to the shipping and agricultural interests concerning the actual and probable state of the weather each day. The first line, forty miles in length, was constructed between Baltimore and Washington, in 1844. Now the lines are extended to every part of our Union, and all over the civilized world, traversing oceans and rivers, and bringing Persia and New York within one hour's space of intercommunication."