COMMERCE (INTERNAL) OF THE UNITED STATES. 



115 



consumption the importation of which has con- 

 siderably decreased, and the classes of exported 

 products whose quantities and values have re- 

 markably augmented. That agricultural pro- 

 duction has increased within the last few years 

 more rapidly than industrial is perfectly natu- 

 ral, from the opening of avenues of transpor- 

 tation communicating with immense tracts of 

 fertile lands, which were before shut out from 

 all markets, but which can now lay down their 

 products with facility in any mart on the globe 

 where there is a demand for them. The length 

 of new railroads constructed during the ten 

 years from 1868 to 1877 inclusive was about 

 40,000 miles. 



Cooperating with the increased facilities for 

 marketing the natural products of the country 

 abroad is a powerful stimulant, or rather ne- 

 cessity, for exporting the productions which 

 are most available for that purpose, and for 

 extending the branches of production which 

 find the readiest market in the great commer- 

 cial nations. This necessity consists in the 

 great mass of indebtedness which is owing in 

 this country to European capitalists, which is 

 the chief cause and explanation of the large 

 and still growing balance of trade in favor of 

 the United States. For the last three years 

 the excess of exports over imports has been 

 very large, and has increased in a remarkable 

 progression, while every other large commer- 

 cial nation has in the same period complained 

 of an adverse balance. While vast debts, pub- 

 lic, corporate, and private, are owed in Eng- 

 land and other foreign countries, there exists 

 a market ready-made for the surplus products 

 of the United States at better rates than could 

 otherwise be obtained, and a stimulus and ne- 

 cessity for creating an exportable surplus of 

 the commodities of which the creditor coun- 

 tries, or those connected with them by intimate 

 commercial intercourse, stand most in need. 

 A large exportation of grain and provisions is 

 necessary to pay for the very railroads which 

 bring them to the seaboard, a good number of 

 which were built during the speculative period 

 from 1869 to 1873, to a great extent with capi- 

 tal borrowed abroad, and with rails in great 

 part imported at double the present prices of 

 iron. The excess of exports over imports 

 amounted in the year ending June 30, 1876, 

 to $79,643,481. In 1877 it had increased to 

 $151,152,094. In the year 1877-'78 it reached 

 the sum of $257,814,234, and had increased by 

 the end of October at such a rate that, were 

 the exports and imports the same for the rest 

 of the year as in 1877-'78, the balance of trade 

 for 1879 would be over three hundred millions; 

 yet the earlier movement of the grain crop of 

 1878 should be considered in the calculation. 



Although the exportation of agricultural and 

 other raw products has, from natural causes, 

 relatively increased over that of manufactured 

 products, the fact that the manufacturing in- 

 dustries have developed in a scarcely less re- 

 markable manner is shown by the enormous 



falling off of exports in many of the leading 

 manufactured articles. It has been estimated 

 that the exports of finished manufactures during 

 the ten years preceding the war, 1851-1860, 

 formed 13'8 per cent, of the total value of ex- 

 ports ; but that during the ten years following 

 the war, 1866-76, they formed but 10'3 per 

 cent, of the aggregate exports. This is suffi- 

 ciently explained by the increased facilities for 

 exporting the products of the soil. The growth 

 of industrial production is shown by the rapid 

 displacement of imported manufactures by 

 home-made goods, which has gone on steadily 

 since the civil war, and still more rapidly dur- 

 ing the last three or four years, although the 

 decrease of imports in those years is attribu- 

 table in a considerable degree to the diminished 

 capacity for consumption, just as no small por- 

 tion of the large importations of the specula- 

 tive period preceding them, which gave in one 

 year an adverse balance of $180,000,000, was 

 attributable to over-stimulated and luxurious 

 consumption during that sanguine and debt- 

 making epoch. 



According to the returns of the last census, 

 the manufactures of the United States increased 

 in the quantity of the annual product 52 per 

 cent, during the ten years from 1860 to 1870, 

 while the increase in population during the 

 same period was only 22 '2 per cent. The value 

 of the yearly manufactured product was re- 

 ported in 1850 as averaging $44 per head of 

 the population, and in 1860 at $65 per head. 

 In 1870 it was returned as $128 per head, and, 

 making allowance for the inflation of prices, 

 must have amounted to something near $100 

 on the former basis of values. Since 1870 the 

 productive industries of the United States must 

 have developed with equal or greater rapidity, 

 and, judging by the returns of imports and 

 exports, are capable of supplying the country 

 with most of the great staples of manufacture, 

 and even of marketing some classes of staple 

 products and many well-wrought and inge- 

 niously devised American specialties in coun- 

 tries from which a few years ago the same 

 classes of goods were imported. During the 

 period which preceded the late season of in- 

 dustrial depression, when all departments of 

 enterprise were excited to an extraordinary 

 state of activity, the industrial facilities of the 

 country were extended with unreasonable ra- 

 pidity. During the four years from 1870 to 

 1874 the number of spindles employed in mill- 

 ing cotton were increased from 7,114,000 to 

 9,415,383, or about 33 per cent. A similar 

 extension of the plants was made in several 

 other industries. This extension of productive 

 capacity was out of all proportion to any possi- 

 ble increase of consumptive powers or extension 

 of the foreign markets, and must be followed 

 by a season of reaction and retardation. The 

 number of spindles in 1878 is reported at about 

 10,500,000. That the hopes of the buoyant 

 period of overwrought activity were not wholly 

 misplaced, and that the efforts then made will 



