Part 21
The erection of manufacturing establishments was recommended some time ago by intelligent citizens, who foresaw that the money capital of the country could not long supply the great efflux of specie. Now, a change of policy becomes a matter of necessity. It is chiefly to be regretted several State legislatures are too active in forcing the circulation of degraded money;--a procedure which, in the meantime, retards the natural subsidence of the convulsion, and keeps property out of the hands of its real owners. However far they may succeed in procuring indemnity for past peculations, their efforts must be impotent in opposition to the future interests of mankind. The paper currency that they strive to support falls in spite of their utmost exertions. I now find that my expense of living or of travelling is nominally the same that it was in the autumn of 1818. At that time I paid in specie, or in money, which {247} was considered as nearly equivalent to it, but of late I have on various occasions found that paper is accepted which is 50 per cent. worse than silver. A person who collected a salary to the amount of about eight hundred dollars, told me that he had received only five dollars of that sum in specie. You can easily perceive that, under this state of things, very few will give specie to the tavern-keeper, grocer, or others, while he can previously procure for it one and a half times, or twice its nominal amount, in what is called current paper. Most of the small towns have a person who follows the business of money changing; and merchants and other persons transact in that way, so that specie is almost entirely withdrawn from retail business, and applied to the purchase of public lands, or other objects, for which depreciated paper would not be accepted of in payment. Under this condition, an unsettled or precarious sort of internal trade is carried on, but it is impossible to import foreign goods as formerly.
The want of employment is another strong inducement to adopt an independent system of economy, but a cumbrous load of paper money presses industry to the earth. It is found by experience that the farmer cannot pay 125 cents per day to the labourer, and sell his corn for 25 cents per bushel, nor can the labourer work for a small hire while he pays two and a half, or three dollars a-week for his board, and an extravagant price for his clothing. Similar obstacles occur in almost every branch of industry that furnishes anything for exportation, or comes into competition with the labour of foreign artizans, so that the operations of this country now consist chiefly of works of first necessity. A gentleman who has opportunities of being well acquainted with the {248} business of Philadelphia, has computed that in that county alone, there are at least 15,000 persons who are either entirely idle or are engaged in unproductive labour. He stated that he has had more than twenty applications for employment, when he could give work only to one, and that several other manufacturers say, that they cannot employ a tenth part of the applicants they meet with. The same gentleman estimates that there are about 150,000 unemployed persons along the Atlantic coast, and that there are 350,000 persons of the same description in other parts of the country.[132] It is not pretended that these enumerations are derived from accurate data, or that they are even very close approximations to the real numbers; but, taken in connection with other well known facts, they may be received as satisfactory evidence that the evil exists to a very considerable extent.[133]
{249} Want of employment is here viewed as a want of organization. With you it is represented to be an indication of an overpeopled country. The government of the United States does not attempt to get rid of its people, but, on the contrary, it welcomes the stranger who arrives on their shores. Your government pay for transporting their subjects, or encourage their removal by giving them lands gratis. Canada is wide enough to receive them, but its connection with England does not admit of a free trade. Multitudes of emigrants find their comforts as narrow as before, and remove into the United States. If facts of this sort indicate any thing, it is that no extent of country can compensate for mismanagement, or, in other words, a nation is more easily overstocked from impolicy than from want of soil.
The habits and institutions of the American people are peculiarly favourable to the adoption of manufacturing pursuits. They have no corporations with exclusive privileges, and no laws which enact any specific period of apprenticeship. Their well known spirit of enterprise, and the circumstance {250} of almost every man’s being acquainted with handling the axe, the hammer, the saw, and the joiner’s plane, must give a facility to the acquisition of mechanical labour. Besides, it is understood that a few weeks, or at farthest a few months, are enough to communicate the knowledge of most of those employments, and that the work can soon be reduced to practice by subsequent application. The progress already made in several branches of manufacture tend to inspire a strong hope as to future attainments. The fabrication of coarse cotton cloths, called _domestics_, which now undersell British goods of similar quality; the making of iron articles, of leather-hats, paper, types, engravings, the construction of steam-boats, and the building of ships, are mentioned as flattering examples.
As the disposition to promote American manufactures is progressive, and as popular opinion dictates the measures of the government, it may be safe to infer that commerce with England is now in a deep decline, and that the erection of workshops (though it should be on a moderate scale) may be hailed as the liberation of the United States from foreign monopoly.
FOOTNOTES:
[130] The Philadelphia Society for Promoting Domestic Manufactures, organized in 1803, with Stephen Girard as president, was incorporated in 1805. A central warehouse was established, where articles of American manufacture could be concentrated and sold, thus doing away with the expense of middlemen. The society was active in advocating a protective tariff.
The Cincinnati Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Manufactures, and Domestic Economy was organized in 1819. Quarterly meetings were held, and prizes offered for the best essays on subjects relating to agriculture and domestic manufactures.--ED.
[131] “_1st._ We will not purchase, or suffer to be used in our families, any imported liquors, fruits, nuts, or preserves of any kind, unless they shall be required in cases of sickness.
“_2d._ Being convinced, that the practice which generally prevails of wearing suits of black as testimonials of respect for the memory of deceased friends, is altogether useless, if not improper, while it is attended with a heavy expense; we will not sanction it hereafter in our families, or encourage it in others.
“_3d._ We will not purchase, for ourselves or our families, such articles of dress as are expensive, and are generally considered as ornamental rather than useful.
“_4th._ We will abstain from the use of imported goods of every description, as far as may be practicable, and we will give a preference to articles that are of the growth and manufacture of our own country, when the latter can be procured.
“_5th._ We will not purchase any articles, either of food or dress, at prices that are considered extravagant, or that the citizens generally cannot afford to pay; but will rather abstain from the use of such articles until they can be obtained at reasonable prices.
“_6th._ We will observe a rigid economy in every branch of our expenditures, and will, in all our purchases, be influenced by necessity rather than convenience, and by utility rather than ornament.
“_7th._ We believe that the prosperity of the country depends in a great degree on a general and faithful observance of the foregoing declaration; we therefore promise that we will adhere to it ourselves, and that we will recommend it to others.”--_Farnsworth’s Cincinnati Directory._--FLINT.
[132] Letter to the President of the United States, by John Melish, Esq. Phil. 1818.--FLINT.
[133] From the paucity of the circumstances attended to in statistical inquiries, the most superficial observer might infer that national pride is sufficiently gratified by the number of human beings, without regard to that of useful or efficient citizens, and that governments are satisfied with knowing little more of their people than that they die, and that they were born. It were to be wished that enumerations were made annually, instead of at the usual long intervals of time; and in addition to the particulars ordinarily ascertained, such were embraced as, the number of those who can show that they procure their subsistence by lawful means; those who have fixed residences; those who have received a moral education; the nature of employments; the duration and immediate causes of their avocations; bankruptcies; convictions for specified crimes; the known or proximate causes of deaths; cases of lunacy; _felo de se_; epidemy and meteorological registers made in every department of the country. The collection of information of this kind might be conducted in a manner that would operate as a beneficial supervision of society. It would furnish the police department with a new insight into the sources of delinquency. Taken in connection with coexistent laws which effect trade and revenue, and criminal laws, and the state of markets, political economy would be furnished with new instruments for investigation. The approach of misery might frequently be anticipated and arrested without being exhibited on the poor’s list, in the workhouse, or in the shape of inability to pay taxes. Crimes might be prevented, and better criteria obtained for discriminating between offences committed _against_ law, and those perpetrated _by_ law. A new light would be thrown on several branches of physical science, and particularly on agriculture, climate, and the healing art. It is but too easy to discover that the desideratum is not in unison with the affairs of the age, but it is probable that another Alfred, or a Lycurgus must arise before it can be remedied.--FLINT.
{251} LETTER XXI
Circuit Court of Indiana--Lawyers--Presiding Judge--Trial and Whipping of a Thief--Lands--Crops--Fourteen-Mile-Creek--Salt Springs--Town of Corydon--Drought-Barrens-Caves-Effects of a Tornado--Formation of the Higher Alluvial Bottom Lands of the Ohio--More Barrens--Salt River--Large Trees--Wild Vines--Steam-Boats--The Falls of the Ohio--Prevalence of Bilious and Intermittent Fevers--Taciturnity--Americanisms.
_Jeffersonville, (Indiana,) Sept. 8, 1820._
Since writing my last letter to you, I have made several short excursions into the country.--I was at Charlestown, the seat of justice in Clark county,[134] while the circuit court sat there, and had opportunities of hearing the oratory of several barristers, which was delivered in language at once strong, elegant, and polite. A spirit of emulation prevails at the bar, and a gentleman of good taste informed me, that some young practitioners have made vast progress within two or three years past. The United States certainly open an extensive school for eloquence. The number of cases of litigation before the various courts of justice is very great; and there are numerous opportunities for exerting popular talent, as at elections, where the harangues are called stump-speeches, from the practice of candidates mounting the stumps of trees, and there addressing themselves to the people, and in State Assemblies.
{252} The circuit court consists of a presiding judge, who makes a progress over the whole State, and who meets with two associate judges at the several seats of justice. Associate judges are local, and only act in their respective counties. One of these gentlemen opened the court at Charlestown last year in the absence of the presiding judge.--A large jug, for holding cold water, that stood on the bench, had a caricature portrait of a judge painted on it, and several lawyers, on coming forward to open their cases, bowed to the figure, and directed their eyes to it during their speeches, occasioning much laughter in the house. It was not till the arrival of the presiding judge that the contempt was checked. Freedoms on the part of lawyers seem to be promoted in the back-country, in consequence of the bench being occasionally filled with men who are much inferior to those at the bar. The salary of the presiding judge (I have been told) is only seven hundred dollars a-year. As he is engaged in public business and in travelling nearly the whole of his time, that sum can only defray his expenses, even under the most economical management, so that there can be no great error in supposing that he acts gratuitously. The present presiding judge is a man who has distinguished himself in Indian warfare.[135] Whatever opinion you may form of the bench here, you may be assured that it is occupied as a post of honour.
Amongst the business of the court, the trial of a man who had stolen two horses excited much interest. On his being sentenced to suffer thirty stripes, he was immediately led from the bar to the whipping-post. Every twitch of the cowhide, (a weapon formerly described,) drew a red line across his back. This was the second infliction of the kind that had been sanctioned by {253} court in the State, since my coming into it. I do not notice the infrequency of punishments as wishing to occasion a belief that misdemeanours are seldom committed. Indeed, were it not for the absolute impunity obtained in most cases, we might soon see the partial development of a new system of physiognomy, one not founded on the features of the face, but on the striped lineaments of the back. Never, till now, did I so much value the usage of Scotland, where the inhabitant, on removing from one parish to another, carries with him the testimonial of the church.
The surface of the land in the neighbourhood of Charlestown is beautifully diversified, varying between gently undulated and steep of broken ground. The soil is of the first rate quality, and covered with luxuriant crops of Indian corn. The crops of wheat are what you would call a second rate crop, and several fields of oats, which I saw, were headed out, and were as bulky as any that I have seen in Mid-Lothian; but, for a reason formerly stated, the grain cannot be expected to arrive at fine quality. The banks of Fourteen-Mile-Creek, (which joins the Ohio at the distance of fourteen miles above the falls,) are cliffs of limestone that are overtopped by tall woods, and form, by their windings, many romantic scenes, of which I can convey no adequate idea. The stream is at present almost entirely dried up, but the extent of its bed, and the marks of inundation by its margin, convince me that its floods are nearly equal to those of the Clyde at Glasgow. Some salt springs that percolate through the rocks in the bottom, have been discovered during the present dry season: the existence of these were first surmised by an ingenious gentleman, with whom I am well acquainted. He proceeded by introducing a small tube into a {254} deep and still part of the river, and drew water from the bottom that was perceptibly saline. He has now some people engaged in boring, by which means the discharge of water has been considerably augmented, and has commenced evaporating on a small scale. This process is usually performed by filling a number of iron kettles, of about three feet in diameter, and six inches deep, with the water, and placing them on loose stones, or over a trench that is dug in the ground for receiving the fuel. Boring for salt water is a work that is occasionally accompanied with a considerable degree of difficulty. Where the bore communicates with a fresh water spring, on a higher level than the saline one, a tube of tinned iron is let down to exclude the former. At the salt-works by Kanhaway River, perforations have been made in the limestone rocks to the depth of two hundred feet. There a hundred gallons of water are said to yield a bushel of salt; but there are waters evaporated in other parts of the country that do not yield more than a fourth, or even a sixth part of that quantity.
Corydon,[136] the capital of the State of Indiana, is a small village, situated in an obscure valley of Indian Creek, and is surrounded by high and broken wooded lands. The weeds which cover the clear parts of the town plot are withered to whiteness by the drought, as is most of the ground in this part of the country, swamps and lands under crop excepted. The site of a new capital for the State is determined to be on the east branch of White River, where the lands are still in the hands of the government. Future convenience, and the prospect of promoting the sale of land in the late Indian purchase, seem to have, on this occasion, triumphed {255} over private interest.--No name has yet been assigned to this inland metropolis.
Between Corydon and the river Ohio, (about twenty-five miles,) the surface is of a rolling structure, and the soil good. Grass, at all times scanty on account of the small quantity of cleared ground, is now withered. The surface, where closely shaded by large trees, scarcely exhibits any thing that is green; rotten logs, and the leaves of last autumn, are strowed over the ground, presenting the most gloomy picture of desolation. Where large trees are thin, a growth of underwood prevails. Grounds called barrens are interspersed with the woods in this part of Indiana.--These are covered over with small copsewood, as hazel and briars, also with grasses, and an immense variety of deciduous plants.--The name _barrens_ must have arisen from the lands so denominated not producing such a large growth of vegetable matter as the forests, rather than from sterility. They are, in reality, much better pasturages than the woodlands, and, when cultivated, produce the best crops of wheat. I found travelling through the barrens to be somewhat uncomfortable, on account of exposure to the rays of the sun, and the dust of the road, which was continually raised, in a little cloud, by the motion of the horse’s feet. This sort of ground is dry, and without the vast quantity of decaying vegetable matters to be seen in the woods, and for these reasons it is probably more conducive to health.
A great portion of the soil of western America lies immediately over immense strata of horizontal limestone, in which are numerous fissures. I have often seen the presence of these indicated in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, by hollows in the {256} ground in the form of inverted cones, which are here called sink holes. Some of these fissures have openings to the surface. A stupendous one in Kentucky,[137] known by the name of the great cave, has been explored to the distance of nine miles from its entrance.[138] The nitrate of potash has been found in some of these caves, and the sulphate of magnesia in others. Many of them abound in stalactites of calc sinter; and copious streams of water pass through some of them. One of these in Kentucky turns a subterraneous mill, to which access is obtained by a sink-hole; and a Colonel C---- of Indiana told me that a settler in his neighbourhood, on digging a well, penetrated into a stream of water, and found blind fishes in it.[139]
During the last and the present summer, this country has suffered droughts, which the inhabitants consider extraordinary. Between Corydon and the Ohio the water was very muddy. Some people in that part are obliged to carry water from a distance of two miles. It is not uncommon now to see mill streams entirely dried up. I have seen several peach trees, with the fruit nearly ripened, almost dried up by the scorching heat; and, in some instances, the woods assuming the appearance of autumn prematurely, from the same cause. The disadvantage of the want of water will be thought less appalling, when it is recollected that the clearing of the ground has a tendency to increase springs; and when it is considered that {257} the dryness of rivers is not occasioned by the total want of springs, but by the evaporation from the bottoms of water-courses; and farther, that water in most situations may be procured by digging wells.
Immediately on the north bank of the Ohio, and about thirty miles below the falls, I crossed an avenue in the woods, 600 or 700 yards wide, which had been devastated by a tornado that had passed from west to east, and in its way cleared the ground almost entirely. The largest trees were either torn up by the roots or broken. In the part that I observed, nothing but underwood and the shattered fragments of trees remained. On making inquiries as to the hurricane, I was informed that it swept over the country to the length of several hundred miles; and that, on the Kentucky side of the river, it totally obstructed a road with timber which has not yet been removed.
It is also about thirty miles below the falls that the range of high land, called the knobs, intersects the river. This is the ridge that crosses the lower part of Indiana, and part of Kentucky, which the late M. Volney noticed under the name of the Silver Creek hills; and by him supposed to have once formed a dam, that retained a lake in the valley of the Ohio, extending from the ridge just mentioned, to the place where Pittsburg now stands. That philosopher attempted to show that the higher bottom lands, which are above the level of the present inundations, were deposited in the bottom of the lake; and that, on the water’s making a gap in the barrier, the lake was drained, and the Ohio withdrawn into its present lower and less capacious bed. That the knobs once formed a dam I am forced to admit, from having seen marks on a high level on the limestone rocks in the gap, which {258} clearly indicate the action of a cataract: but I am, notwithstanding, led to agree with Dr. Drake’s hypothesis, which explains the formation of the higher bottom land, as being the alluvion of the Ohio at a time when that river was much larger than at present. The facts relating to this subject that have come within the reach of my own observation, may perhaps be inserted in a well-known scientific journal. In the meantime, it may be sufficient to say, it is now ascertained, that the waters of Erie, and other great lakes, formerly flowed southward into the valley of the Ohio; and that a cataract, more tremendous than the falls of Niagara, raged among the rocks of Silver Creek hills.
In the neighbourhood of Salt River and Green River, in Kentucky, there are extensive tracks of barren wastes. Small hazel bushes from two to three feet in height abound in these; and the quantity of nuts produced exceeds any thing of the kind which I have ever seen. The soil of these wastes seems to be very similar to that of the adjoining woods; and on account of the trees diminishing gradually in size, from the forest toward the waste, it is sometimes impossible to discover a line where the one stops and the other begins. This, together with the fact told by an old settler, that some small saplings which stood on his farm twenty years ago, are now become tall trees, leads me to adopt the opinion entertained by some, that the wastes or barrens owe their characteristic form to the Indians, who set fire to dried grass and other vegetables with the design of facilitating their hunting.