Part 7 (1/2)

The planting region of the lower Valley furnishes an immense market for the productions and manufactures of the upper Valley. Indirectly, the Louisiana sugar business is a source of profit to the farmer of Illinois and Missouri. Pork, beef, corn, corn-meal, flour, potatoes, b.u.t.ter, hay, &c. in vast quant.i.ties, go to supply these plantations. In laying in their stores, the sugar planters usually purchase one barrel of second or third quality of beef or pork per annum, for each laborer. Large drafts for sugar mills, engines and boilers, are made upon the Cincinnati and Pittsburg iron foundries. Mules and horses are driven from the upper country, or from the Mexican dominions, to keep up the supply.

The commerce of the upper country that concentrates at New Orleans is amazing, and every year is rapidly increasing. Sixteen hundred arrivals of steamboats took place in 1832, and the estimated number in 1835 is 2,300.

_Farmers._--In the northern half of the Valley the productions, and the modes of cultivation and living are such as to characterize a large proportion of the population as farmers. No country on earth has such facilities for agriculture. The soil is abundantly fertile, the seasons ordinarily favorable to the growth and maturity of crops, and every farmer in a few years, with reasonable industry, becomes comparatively independent. Tobacco and hemp are among the staple productions of Kentucky.

Neat cattle, horses, mules and swine are its stock. Some stock growers have monopolized the smaller farms till they are surrounded with several thousand acres. Blue gra.s.s pastures furnish summer feed, and extensive fields of corn, cut up near the ground, and stacked in the fields, furnish stores for fattening stock in the winter.

In some counties, raising of stock has taken place of all other business. The Scioto Valley, and other districts in Ohio, are famous for fine, well fed beef. Thousands of young cattle are purchased by the Ohio graziers, at the close of winter, of the farmers of Illinois and Missouri. The Miami and Whitewater sections of Ohio and Indiana, abound with swine. Cincinnati has been the great pork mart of the world.

150,000 head of hogs have been frequently slaughtered there in a season.

About 75,000 is estimated to be the number slaughtered at that place the present season. This apparent falling off in the pork business, at Cincinnati, is accounted for by the vast increase of business at other places. Since the opening of the ca.n.a.ls in Ohio, many provision establishments have been made along their line. Much business of the kind is now done at Terre Haute and other towns on the Wabash,--at Madison, Louisville, and other towns on the Ohio,--at Alton and other places in Illinois.

The farmers of the West are independent in feeling, plain in dress, simple in manners, frank and hospitable in their dwellings, and soon acquire a competency by moderate labor. Those from Kentucky, Tennessee, or other states south of the Ohio river, have large fields, well cultivated, and enclosed with strong built rail or worm fences, but they often neglect to provide s.p.a.cious barns and other outhouses for their grain, hay and stock. The influence of habit, is powerful. A Kentuckian would look with contempt upon the low fences of a New-Englander as indicating thriftless habits, while the latter would point at the unsheltered stacks of wheat, and dirty thres.h.i.+ng floor of the former, as proof direct of bad economy and wastefulness.

_Population of the Cities and large Towns._ The population of western towns does not differ essentially from the same cla.s.s in the Atlantic states, excepting there is much less division into grades and ranks, less ignorance, low depravity and squalid poverty amongst the poor, and less aristocratic feeling amongst the rich. As there is never any lack of employment for laborers of every description, there is comparatively no suffering from that cause. And the hospitable habits of the people provide for the sick, infirm and helpless. Doubtless, our _circ.u.mstances_ more than any thing else, cause these shades of difference. The common mechanic is on a social equality with the merchant, the lawyer, the physician, and the minister. They have shared in the same fatigues and privations, partook of the same homely fare, in many instances have fought side by side in defence of their homes against the inroads of savages,--are frequently elected to the same posts of honor, and have acc.u.mulated property simultaneously. Many mechanics in the western cities and towns, are the owners of their own dwellings, and of other buildings, which they rent. I have known many a wealthy merchant, or professional gentleman occupy on rent, a building worth several thousand dollars, the property of some industrious mechanic, who, but a few years previous, was an apprentice lad, or worked at his trade as a journeyman. Any sober, industrious mechanic can place himself in affluent circ.u.mstances, and place his children on an equality with the children of the commercial and professional community, by migrating to any of our new and rising western towns. They will find no occasion here for combinations to sustain their interests, nor meet with annoyance from gangs of unprincipled foreigners, under the imposing names of ”Trades Unions.”

Manufactures of various kinds are carried on in our western cities.

Pittsburg has been characterized as the ”Birmingham of America.” The manufactures of iron, machinery and gla.s.s, and the building of steamboats, are carried on to a great extent.

Iron and salt, are made in great quant.i.ties in Western Pennsylvania, and Western Virginia. Steamboats are built to a considerable extent at Fulton, two miles above Cincinnati, and occasionally at many other places on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. Alton offers great facilities for this business. Cotton bagging, bale ropes, and cordage, are manufactured in Tennessee and Kentucky. The following article from the Covington Enquirer, gives a few items of the industry and enterprise of Kentucky,--of the manufacture of Newport and Covington. Both of these thriving towns lie at the mouth of the Licking river, the one on the right bank, and the other on the left, and both in direct view of Cincinnati.

MANUFACTURES IN COVINGTON AND NEWPORT.

”Founding the calculation upon the actual manufactures of October, and the known power of their machinery, the Company will the ensuing year, give employment to more than four hundred operatives, and manufacture,

60,000 lbs. of Cotton Bagging, 84,000 do Cotton Yarns, 274,268 lbs. Bale Rope, 448,000 do Cordage, 44,592 yards Linseys, 63,588 do Cotton Plains, 97,344 do Kentucky Jeans, 548,530 do Cotton Bagging and Hemp.

Estimating Bale Rope and Cotton Bagging at 33 per cent under the price at which the Company have sold these articles for the last six months, the manufactures of this Company during the ensuing year will amount to $358,548.44. Almost all the manufactures at Covington and Newport being exported to foreign markets, it will result that the annual exports from these points will, in round numbers, be from the

Interior $750,000 Campbell County 150,000 Boone County 234,000 Covington 548,500 Newport 358,500 ---------- $2,041,000

The Newport Manufacturing Company has depended princ.i.p.ally for its supply of Hemp, on the production of Mason county, of which Maysville is the market;--this season they have not been able to get a supply at Maysville, and it is a remarkable fact in the history of the Hemp manufactories in Kentucky, that this company, owing to the scarcity and high prices of Hemp in Kentucky, _has imported this season_ 354,201 lbs.

_Russia Hemp_.

Various manufactures are springing up in all the new states, which will be noticed under their proper heads.

The number of merchants and traders is very great in the Valley of the Mississippi, yet mercantile business is rapidly increasing.--Thousands of the farmers of the West, are partial traders. They take their own produce, in their own flat boats, down the rivers to the market of the lower country.

_Frontier cla.s.s of Population._ The rough, st.u.r.dy habits of the backwoodsmen, living in that plenty which depends on G.o.d and nature, have laid the foundation of independent thought and feeling deep in the minds of western people.

Generally, in all the western settlements, three cla.s.ses, like the waves of the ocean, have rolled one after the other. First comes the Pioneer, who depends for the subsistence of his family chiefly upon the natural growth of vegetation, called the ”range,” and the proceeds of hunting.

His implements of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his efforts directed mainly to a crop of corn, and a ”truck patch.” The last is a rude garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roasting ears, cuc.u.mbers and potatoes. A log cabin, and occasionally a stable and corn crib, and a field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or ”deadened,”

and fenced, are enough for his occupancy. It is quite immaterial whether he ever becomes the owner of the soil. He is the occupant for the time being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the ”lord of the manor.” With a horse, cow, and one or two breeders of swine, he strikes into the woods with his family, and becomes the founder of a new county, or perhaps state. He builds his cabin, gathers around him a few other families of similar taste and habits, and occupies till the range is somewhat subdued, and hunting a little precarious, or, which is more frequently the case, till neighbors crowd around, roads, bridges and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow-room. The pre-emption law enables him to dispose of his cabin and cornfield, to the next cla.s.s of emigrants, and, to employ his own figures, he ”breaks for the high timber,”--”clears out for the New Purchase,” or migrates to Arkansas or Texas, to work the same process over.

The next cla.s.s of emigrants purchase the lands, add ”field to field,”

clear out the roads, throw rough bridges over the streams, put up hewn log houses, with gla.s.s windows, and brick or stone chimneys, occasionally plant orchards, build mills, school houses, court houses, &c., and exhibit the picture and forms of plain, frugal, civilized life.

Another wave rolls on. The men of capital and enterprise come. The ”settler” is ready to sell out, and take the advantage of the rise of property,--push farther into the interior, and become himself, a man of capital and enterprise in time. The small village rises to a s.p.a.cious town or city,--substantial edifices of brick, extensive fields, orchards, gardens--colleges and churches are seen. Broadcloths, silks, leghorns, c.r.a.pes, and all the refinements, luxuries, elegancies, frivolities and fas.h.i.+ons, are in vogue. Thus wave after wave is rolling westward--the real _el dorado_ is still farther on.

A portion of the two first cla.s.ses remain stationary amidst the general movement, improve their habits and condition, and rise in the scale of society.

The writer has travelled much amongst the first cla.s.s--the real pioneers. He has lived many years in connexion with the second grade, and now the third wave is sweeping over large districts of Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. Migration has become almost a habit in the west.