OUR COUNTRY'S PROGRESS

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 2, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 9.

OUR COUNTRY'S PROGRESS.

(Continued.)

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 Southwestern 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 Southwest.

A lust for gold, and the knowledge of its existence in America, was the chief incentive to emigration to these shores. But within the domain of our republic very little of it was found, until that domain was extended far toward the Pacific Ocean. It was unsuspected until long after the Revolution. Finally gold was discovered among the mountains of Virginia, North and South Carolina, and in Georgia. North Carolina was the first State in the Union to send gold to the mint in Philadelphia. Its first small contribution was in 1804. From that time until 1823 the average amount produced from North Carolina mines did exceed $2,500 annually. Virginia's first contribution was in 1829, when that of North Carolina, for that year, was $128,000. Georgia sent its first contribution in 1830. It amounted to $212,000. The product so increased that branch mints were established in North Carolina and Georgia in 1837 and 1838, and another at New Orleans.

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. Over all 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 Wilkes-Barre 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.

The commerce of the United States has had a wonderful growth. Its most active development was seen in New England. British legislation imposed heavy burdens upon it in Colonial times, and, like manufactures, it was greatly depressed. The New Englanders built many vessels for their own use, but more for others; and, just before the breaking out of the Revolution, there was quite a brisk trade carried on between the English-American Colonies and the West Indies, as well as with the mother country. The Colonists exported tobacco, lumber, shingles, staves, masts, turpentine, hemp, flax, pot and pearl ashes, salted fish in great quantities, some corn, live stock, pig-iron, and skins and furs procured by traffic with the Indians. Whale and cod fishing was an important branch of commerce. In the former, there were 160 vessels employed at the beginning of 1775, and sperm candles and whale-oil were exported to Great Britain. In exchange for New England products, a large amount of molasses was brought from the West Indies and made into rum to sell to the Indians and fishermen, and to exchange for slaves on the coast of Africa. The entire exports of the Colonies in the year 1770 amounted in value to $14,262,000.

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 Paris and New York within one hour's space of intercommunication.

Banking institutions and insurance companies are intimately connected with commerce. The first bank in the United States was established in 1781, as a financial aid to the government. It was called the Bank of North America. The Bank of New York and Bank of Massachusetts were established soon afterward. On the recommendation of Hamilton in 1791, a national bank was established at Philadelphia, with a capital of $10,000,000, of which sum the government subscribed $2,000,000. Various banking systems, under State charters, have since been tried. During the civil war a system of national banking was established, by which there is a uniform paper currency throughout the Union. The number of national banks at the close of 1863 was 66; the number at the close of 1874 was not far from 1,700, involving capital to the amount of almost $500,000,000.

Fire, marine, and life insurance companies have flourished greatly in the United States. The first incorporated company was established in 1792, in Philadelphia, and known as the “Fire Insurance Company of North America.” Another was established in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1799, and another in New York, in 1806. The first life insurance company was chartered in Massachusetts in 1825, and the “New York Life Insurance and Trust Company” was established in 1829. All others are of recent organization. As a rule, the business of insurance of every kind is profitable to the insurers and the insured. The amount of capital engaged in it is enormous. The fire risks alone, at the close of 1874, amounted to about $200,000,000.

Our growth in population has been steadily increased by immigration from Europe. It began very moderately after the Revolution. From 1784 to 1794 the average number of immigrants a year was 4,000. During the last ten years the number of persons who have emigrated to the United States from Europe is estimated at over 2,000,000, who brought with them, in the aggregate, $200,000,000 in money. This capital and the productive labor of the immigrants, have added much to the wealth of our country. This emigration and wealth is less than during the ten years preceding the civil war, during which time there came to this country from Europe 2,814,554 persons, bringing with them an average of at least $100, or an aggregate of over $281,000,000.

(Concluded next week.)