Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB
[merged small][ocr errors]

the State of Iowa - the great heart of the world's civilization and commerce. She, with her 144,000,000,000 tons, or 12,000 square miles, of coal, with its greater development and use, reckons her wealth, in substantial value, at $100,000,000,000; while our nation, with our 3,740,000,000,000 tons, or 500,000 square miles, of less developed and not so well used coal, and more than twenty-five times as large, are only reckoned to be worth $23,400,000,000, with an annual increase of $921,700,000. It is true, our nation is only in its infancy, but these facts and the contrast teach us how mighty we can be, if we do but use these apparently coarse and unattractive substances, coal and iron, as the best wisdom and skill will enable. We possess thirty-four times the quantity of coal and iron possessed by England, and perhaps double as much as that possessed by all other portions of the earth. These resources are availably located; they are in proximity to the widest plains and richest soils known to man. They are developed by ocean-like lakes or magnificent rivers, and are, or will be, traversed by railroads from ocean to ocean. Their value is incalculable, their extent boundless, and their richness unequaled. They are mines of wealth, more valuable than gold, and sufficiently distributed over this great valley to supply well-regulated labor to 400,000,000 producers and consumers. Adjacent to our coal-fields are our mountains of iron of a superior quality, and of quantity inexhaustible. Thus is St. Louis favored with coal and iron in such endless supplies as to always render them as cheap as the American market can afford. The rich deposits of precious metals which belong to the great mountain system of our continent, being on the west side of the valley, have already, and will necessarily yet more, contribute to building up the interior of the country than either coast region; and though this interest never can be so valuable as that of coal and iron, it is of immense value and important in its bearing upon the subject under discussion. Already the account has been made large, as the following table shows, but not the half has been taken from those rich and extended mines:

Table showing the Growth of Coinage of the United States from 1793 to 1867.

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

Total, 74 years............................

$885,375,470 61 $137,914,587 14 $7,415,163 55 $1,030,705,141 30

Valuable forests of the best timbers used in mechanical industry are to be found in the southeastern part of the State, and will, in due time, furnish material for agricultural implements, furniture, and the various uses to which timber is applied. Water powers, not surpassed in any part of New England, are to be found in many parts of the southern half of the State, and which,

[ocr errors][ocr errors]

when properly improved, will contribute largely to the commercial interests of St. Louis.

There still remains to be considered the domestic navigation of the Mississippi Valley. This includes, in its broadest scope, the Gulf and the greater lakes, with the Mississippi river and her tributaries, which comprise the finest inland navigation on the globe. These rivers afford more than 20,000 miles of navigable water, which form transportation facilities for the commerce of the most productive portions of the great Valley States. The following remark of Col. Benton is very expressive of the magnitude and importance of the river system of this great valley:

"The river navigation of the Great West," said he, "is the most wonderful on the globe, and, since the application of steam power to the propulsion of vessels, possesses the essential qualities of open navigation. Speed, distance, cheapness, magnitude of cargoes, are all there, and without the perils of the sea from storms and enemies. The steamboat is the ship of the river, and finds in the Mississippi and its tributaries the amplest theater for the diffusion and the display of its power. Wonderful river! Connected with seas by the head and by the mouth, stretching its arms toward the Atlantic and the Pacific, lying in a valley which is a valley from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson's Bay; drawing its first waters not from rugged mountains; but from the plateau of the lakes in the center of the Continent, and in communication with the sources of the St. Lawrence and the streams which take their course north to Hudson's Bay; draining the largest extent of richest land, collecting the products of every clime, even the frigid, to bear the whole to market in the sunny South, and there to meet the products of the entire world. Such is the Missis. sippi; and who can calculate the aggregate of its advantages and the magnitude of its future commercial results?"

St. Louis is centrally situated in this great system of domestic navigation, and cannot fail to be, in all the future, the most important city and depot identified with its interests. In the nature of river navigation, a smaller class of boats is required for the upper waters than those which can be most economically used in deeper streams, and hence arises a necessity for transfer, at some point, from up-river boats to those of greater tonnage; and at that point of transfer, business must arise sufficient of itself to sustain a considerable city. The fact that St. Louis is this natural point of transfer between the upper waters of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Illinois, and the great channel thence to the Gulf, is not to be overlooked in estimating its natural advantages. To the domestic navigation we add the railway system of the Valley States, which will, in a few years more, comprise more than 100,000 miles; and, by reference to the map illustrating this new inland agency for the easy exchange of products and people, we behold at a glance a most wonderful system traversing all parts of these States. In the rapid construction of these lines of communication, St. Louis is fast becoming the greatest railway center on the Continent, as well as in the world, and, with her advantages for domestic navigation, she is soon to be provided with the best commercial facilities of any city on the globe; and to her 20,000 miles of river navigation will be added, in less than fifteen years,

a continental system of railway communication; and with all these constantly bearing an ever-increasing commerce to her markets, who cannot foresee her destiny among the cities of the world? These thousands of miles of railway can be built the cheapest of any extended system in the world, as they are unobstructed by mountain ranges; they will also be the straightest, shortest, and best routes from point to point, for the same reason. Granting that she will become the center of the greatest railway communication and of river navigation in the country, we must take into the account the question of freights, as an item of interest which will bear directly upon the subject of the growth of all American cities. Cheap freights will have a direct and important bearing upon the matter of distributing food and raiment to the people of the Valley States, and also of giving to their products the advantages of the best market. To settle this question in favor of St. Louis, involves but two points necessary to be considered: the first, the universal competition constantly existing between the various rival railroads of the Valley States, which will, of necessity, make the freights to St. Louis as cheap as to any other city; the second point is, that St. Louis stands in the midst of the greatest producing and consuming region of the country, and in this she cannot fail to have the advantage over any rival city that may aspire for empire in the republic or the world. Situated, then, as she is, in the very heart of the productive power of the country, and destined, at a very early date, to be connected by railway and by water, in the most advantageous way, with overy city and harbor upon our seacoast, and with every inland city and productive region where industry and wealth can find opportunity, we are led to consider her future as a commercial and manufacturing city, and her Advantages to become a distributing point for the future millions of industrious and intelligent of our race who are yet to inhabit this Continent, under one flag and one language.

Let us go a little deeper into the discussion. Having pointed out a condition of advantages which naturo, by an inscrutable wisdom, has organized sufficiently strong to insure, under a well-directed civilization, the production on our Continent of the future great city of the world, it is a part of the argument to point out some of the essential incidental wants and conditions which must control the use of products in civilized life, in order to make them subserve the highest use in supplying the wants of man.

The first essential want of any productivo people is markets, whereat to dispose of their surplus products, mechanical or agricultural, at profitable prices. Markets are a want of population in all lands. Mr. Seaman says, in the first series of his valuable work on the progress of nations, that " "population alone adds value to lands and property of every kind, and is, therefore, one of the principal sources and causes of wealth." And why is it so? Simply because it creates a market by causing a demand for property and products; it enhances their price and exchangeable value, rewards the producer for his industry, and encourages and increases industry and production. Population thus creates markets, and markets operate to enhance prices and to increase wealth, industry, and production. Markets are, therefore, among the principal

causes and sources of value and of wealth, and stimulants of industry. The farmer, mechanic, miner, and manufacturer are all beneficial to each other, for the reason that each wants the products of every other in exchange for his own, and thus each creates a market for the products of all the others, and thereby enhances prices and stimulates their industry. Hence the advantage to the farmer of increasing mechanical, manufacturing, and mining industry, as far as practicable, in his own country, in order to create a market for his products and to encourage domestic commerce.

Agricultural products alone cannot furnish the materials of an active commerce, and two nations almost exclusively agricultural have seldom much intercourse with each other. Tyro, Carthage, and Athens, in ancient, and Venice, Florence, Genoa, and the Netherlands, in more modern times, were the greatest of commercial nations at their respective eras, as Great Britain is now, because they were also in advance of all other nations in the mechanic arts and manufactures, and their commerce was based on their mechanism and manufacturing industry, which furnished the principal subject-matter and materials for making exchanges and carrying on commerce with foreign nations. Then it is that the people of this great valley must look to the proper and highest use of the resources and materials which nature has so bountifully bestowed. Capital and skill must be made to supply the everincreasing demand of this growing people, and thus it will become the mightiest in art, the most bountiful in the field, and the richest in commerce, "and in peace more puissant than army or navy, for the conquest of the world ;" and, stimulated to loftier endeavors, each citizen, yielding to irresistible attraction, will seek a new life in the great national family.

But it is argued by some that a city cannot be successful in the pursuit of both commercial and manufacturing interests. This cannot be maintained as a correct position. There never has been any war between commerce and the mechanic arts. There can be none. They are the twin offspring of industry and intelligence, and alike dependent on each other for prosperity. The false conception of the relations they hold to each other, and the condition of prosperity they impose upon a city, come from a failure to perceive the truo interests. The principles of economy regulate them both, and it is rarely that a city situated, as they are, on a harbor, on the coast, or an available point on a river, where commerce can find its easiest exchange, is equally advantageously situated with reference to the raw material necessary to enter into the mechanic arts on such terms of competition as to enable the producer to compete with rival products in the market of the country. It is because cities are so situated that a strict adherence to the rules of economy cannot admit of the union of commerce and mechanic arts in the same city, that some suppose that a commercial city cannot be made a manufacturing city, and that a manufacturing city cannot be made a commercial city.

The following remarks, from a writer in the New York Times, is a valuable item in our argument: "No one who desires to understand the whole subject of his country's future should fail to seek the metropolitan center of that country. The question which puzzles the people, and even the newspapers, of late, is

[ocr errors]

this, Where is Paris, the London, or the Jerusalem, of the nation?' I know New York has yet the clearest title to that claim, but of late St. Louis has spoken much and often in her own behalf-with what truthfulness, I propose to examine. Chicago has been heard, Cincinnati-puts in her voice, Philadelphia prides herself upon her strength and beauty, Boston calls herself the hub, and others put in their claims. Now, next to New York, I am disposed to regard the claim of St. Louis. Before slavery died this claim was not worth much, but that dead weight is now removed. Standing here, then, in St. Louis, an Eastern man, I cannot resist the impression that I am in the future commercial, if not political, metropolis of the land. A thousand voices conspire to enforce this impression upon the not very prophetic mind. I would make no invidious flings at the cheek of Chicago, the conceit of Boston, the cool silence of a New Yorker, as he points to a forest of masts and a million of people, the nonchalant airs of the City of Brotherly Love, and the peculiar habits of Cincinnati. Chicago has the railroads, she says. Granted. A metropolis of railroads, without a river deep, pure, and broad enough to afford drink to her present population, suggests the idea that railroads cannot make a city. Fitchburg, in Massachusetts, has more railroads than any New England town. What does that bring her, save the name of being Fitchburg? Shipping alone, which you have in New York, cannot make a city. Philadelphia may keep on annexing every town in Pennsylvania, and Jersey, too, and that cannot make a metropolis. The pork trade flourishes in Cincinnati, but even so respectable a constituency as a gentlemanly porker, who loves luxury, lives on the fat of the land, and is otherwise excessively aristocratic, cannot make a metropolis. In fact, no great cosmopolitan center can be made out of one specialty. Manchester is greater than London in its specialty, but Manchester's specialty must always keep it constrained, and prevent its ever becoming a center. Cologne, with 'seventy-nine well-defined, distinct, and separate ' perfumes, has made it the city of odors, but Cologne can never be a capital. Shoes make and kill Lynn at once. Lowell and Lawrence have reached their highest glory. Chicago is a depot for speculators in grain, and Cincinnati abounds in hogs, but this is the end of their glory. New York and St. Louis are alike in this: you will find every specialty in about equal proportion. St. Louis only needs one thing to make it to the West what New York is to the East-railroads. She is not even an inland city. Light-draught sailing vessels can sail from St. Louis to London. All that she further needs is age. Up to 1866, capital was slow to venture and settle down in this city. Save a few thrifty Germans, the population of St. Louis was southern. This was her condition up to this time, so that she is, practically, a city of only ten years' growth."

There is another principle that enters into the account, which may be termed the involuntary or fortuitous cause-a kind of happening so! It is the highest form of incidental action in commerce. Often commerce, as if by the control of an unknown law, will change from one city to another, and impoverish the one and give vitality and strength to the other. These changes, at first thought, seem to be as inexplicable as the eddy movements of the water in the stream.

« AnteriorContinua »