FINANCIAL VIEW. 



QUANTITY AND COST. 



Some years since, the annual production of to- 

 bacco throughout the world was estimated at four 

 billions of pounds. This mass, if transformed into 

 roll-tobacco two inches in diameter, would coil 

 around the world sixty times ; or, if made up into 

 tablets, as sailors use it, would form a pile as high 

 as an Egyptian pyramid. Allowing the cost of the 

 unmanufactured material to be ten cents a pound, 

 the yearly expense of this poisonous growth amounts 

 to four hundred millions of dollars. Put into mar- 

 ketable shape, the annual cost reaches one thou- 

 sand millions of dollars. This sum, according to 

 careful computation, would construct two railroads 

 round the earth, at twenty thousand dollars a mile. 

 It would build a hundred thousand churches, each 

 costin£ ten thousand dollars, or half a million of 

 school-houses, each costing two thousand ; or it 

 would employ a million of preachers and a million 

 teachers, at a salary of five hundred dollars. 

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