528 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



PRODUCTIONS AND 



PECULIARITIES OF 

 CONTINENT. 



THE NORTH AMERICAN 



But to the intelligent buainess men of Europe it may seem 

 that a course so suicidal to Chicago would not be persisted iu 

 by the Chicago Board of Trade, and, that as a consequence, no 

 diversion of the produce trade of that city may be looked for, 

 but rather a steady annual increase. To this it may be answered, 

 that no relaxation has yet taken place iu the St. Louis system, 

 and that the Chicago Board of Trade is the mere exponent of 

 the judgment of the Chicago people. What, therefore, other 

 people may regard as the effect of a particular course. Western 

 people may consider aa the cause ; but the right way of think- 

 ing may rest with those who have no interest either way. The 

 people of St. Louis, for example, may have considered that the 

 position of that city was such as would command the Mis- 

 sissippi and Missouri trade; and with respect to produce, that 

 it was expedient that superior gi ades only should be bought 

 and sold. Unquestionably it was considered that such was 

 the surest means of securing headway in St. Louis, and it may 

 be thought so still ; but people outside of St. Louis, or rather 

 outside of the United States, entertain different views, and 

 make no doubt that if that policy had not been pursued, the 

 produce trade of St. Louis at the present day would have been 

 tenfold greater than it is. The growth of the produce trade of 

 St. Louis would be held by the people of that city to be in a 

 large measure owing to their restrictive system, while other 

 people would consider that in spite of that restriction the trade 

 was being developed gradually ; and it is remarkable that so 

 intelligent and numerous a community as that of St. Louis 

 should be distinguished by so little breadth and depth of 

 thought. Familiarity with the unphilosophical views of the 

 protection-to-native-industry party — in fact, knowing nothing 

 but these views can alone account for so obsolete and unbusi- 

 neas-like a state. 



The same wrongheadedness obtains in Chicago. People 

 there, as elsewhere in the United States, do not drive on the 

 same side of the road aa people do in England, and, as a general 

 rule, act as contrariwise in other things. In particular, they 

 have come to consider that it is not the produce trade that has 

 made Chicago, but that Chicago has made the produce trade. 

 As a consequence, it is supposed that the produce trade must, 

 as a matter of necessity, conform to whatever rule may be im- 

 posed by the sovereign wiil and sovereign wisdom of the people; 

 and, as exemplifying the egregious length the people are dis- 

 posed to go, a recent iostance may be taken from the action 

 of parties engaged in the lumber trade. Lumber, it may be 

 observed, in a prairie coimtry is a great staple article of de- 

 mand, and being most extensively used by farmers, goes to 

 balance the account for grain. On the principle, then, that 

 Chicago had made both its grain and lumber trade, it was 

 argued recently that the lumber trade should be made to pay 

 the lumberers better than it did, and with that view strict 

 grades of lumber and close inspections became the custom and 

 the law. Farmers therefore do not now get the facilities 

 and the bargains that they used to do, but in reality are 

 made to pay an over price. Anywhere but in America that 

 course would have been deprecated by the newspaper press, 

 and the common sense of business people ; but western busi- 



ness people are impressed with the belief that the United 

 States, and Chicago in particular, are " bound to grow," every- 

 thing to the contrary notwithstanding, and the newspaper press 

 simply echo the vulgar cry. 



Here in England, however, we look at these mattera in a 

 rational and unprejudiced sort of way. We can understand 

 that if on the one hand, obstructions are placed in the way of 

 marketing grain at Chicago, that grain will seek a market else- 

 where ; and if, on the other hand, obstructions are placed in 

 the way of the prairie farmer buying Chicago lumber, there 

 will be a double motive for the farmer to make a change. 

 Lumber he can buy on the Upper Mississippi without restric- 

 tion of any kind ; and with an English demand at New 

 Orleans for Western wheat, the mushroom Chicago trade 

 will inevitably disappear. 



Upon the continuance of Western trade in the Chicago 

 Channel it has been shown alreadj', and will be adverted to at 

 length in another place, that the hopes of Canada and New 

 York depend. Should that trade seek the Mississippi outlet, 

 the St. Lawrence canals and the Erie canal will become all but 

 useless, and the slocks of Eastern and Canadian railroads 

 suffer serious depreciation in their market value. The present 

 30urse of Western trade rests on the sufferance, or rather on 

 ihe inattention, of the people of St. Louis ; and should that in- 

 attention be not speedily disturbed, the nest deficient English 

 harvest vrill attract the foreign capitalist to the Mississippi and 

 Illinois river market-towns; and while Canada and the Eastern 

 States are iu a frozen state, every surplus barrel of flour 

 and sack of wheat will be floated down open water to New 

 Jrleans, and nothing left in spring for the Canadian and New 

 York canals to do. That operation once accomplished, the 

 foreign capitalist would find his efforts seconded by the 

 Southern States, and the channels of the Mississippi and Ohio 

 speedily become adapted to the navigation of the largest 

 ocean steamers. 



There is no extravagance in these remarks. Chicago, as will 

 be shown presently, receives its supplies of produce from the 

 Mississippi, not by water chiefly, but by railroad ; and it is 

 not too much to say that the cost of transporting grain from 

 the Mississippi river to Chicago is equal to the cost of trans- 

 portation from the Upper Mississippi to New Orleans ; and 

 less than the cost of transporting grain from Chicago to New 

 York would cover the transportation from New Orleans to 

 Mark Lane or Liverpool. In a word, grain transported by 

 the l^issisaippi from the growing western districts would be 

 received by the English consuming classes at a less trans- 

 portation charge than that now incurred in the transporta- 

 tion of grain from the western growing districts to New York. 

 Could a stronger case be put to the business men of the United 

 States and Europe? and could stronger ground be taken 

 against the mistaken policy of the Canadian and New York 

 canals and railroads ? 



The following were the grain receipts at Chicago for the 

 year ending Slst December, 1857, by the Illinois Canal and 

 the different railroads : — 



