THE SEED BUSINESS OP THE WEST. 



A few years since, the sight of an agricultural implement here was a rarity — 

 and the sales of such articles as straw-cutters, patent churns, horse-rakes, horse- 

 powers and threshers, mowing and roapiug-machincs, &c., wore a meagre nothing. 

 Xow, it is not an uncommon thing to see a broad acre of ground, on our wluirf, 

 or at some of our depots, covered with them. Manufactures have sprung up all 

 around ns, and the whole country teems with implements. In Cincinnati there 

 are four houses devoted entirely to the sale of grass-seeds, garden-seeds, and 

 agricultural implements. 



In Louisville, about the first attempt to open up a regular seed business was in 

 1844, by our very enterprising friend, A. G. Munn. About $20,000 worth of 

 seeds and agricultural tools were as much as could be sold that year. For 

 the last three years his average sales are $100,0QD per annum. There are now 

 three large establishments for the sale of seeds and implements, and one factory, 

 employing forty hands, and turning out a vast quantity of work every week. A 

 safe estimate of the amounts sold annually, by all, would reach $350,000, exclu- 

 sive of engine work, wagons, &c., or machinery for plantations. 



In St. Louis, the revolution has been more complete than elsewhere — but want 

 of space will prevent our giving the fact any notice of a statistical nature. Well do 

 I remember when a few barrels of seed and a few implements served for the year's 

 supply. Now, St. Louis sells more implements than any city west of the Alle- 

 ghany Mountains. And soon, Chicago, perhaps, may be pressing hard upon her 

 heels in the great strife of emulation. It is hard to predict where we shall land, 

 for everything, since the introduction of railroads and telegraphs, seems to be 

 transitory and fleeting. A city or town rises and falls, as it were, almost in a 

 day. Trade from a certain source, which may have been the main prop and sup- 

 port of quite a commercial metropolis, passes off like dew under the potent influ- 

 ence of improvements. For the past three years, Cincinnati has been made to 

 stagger under the influence of these diversions, and whether, when all things are 

 completed, she is to be straightened up, or straightened out, time alone can deter- 

 mine. The shifting scenes of trade, in consequence of railroad and other public 

 improvements, is not so visible anywhere else as in the West. Trade is withdrawn 

 from one place and attracted to another, with so much mysterious facility as not 

 to be realized until the actual facts are staring us in the face. It is but a few 

 years since, when the eye of prophecy saw the great destiny of New Orleans. As 

 a commercial emporium, it was to have no rival on this continent. Already it had 

 become the immediate outlet and inlet in transitu of one of the grandest trades in 

 the world. Nobody thought, a few years since, of shipping to, or of receiving 

 goods from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, &c., by any other route 

 than by the way of New Orleans. 



Now, how is the mighty fallen ! Railroads have so changed the scene that New 

 Orleans has become almost an obsolete phase in many commercial atmospheres ! 



