AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 63 



destined to a greatness imperishable as the silken thread that 

 forms the Union. ' While the annual exports from her most 

 southerly port alone, amount to at least twenty millions of dol- 

 lars, consisting not of the luxuries but mainly of the necessaries 

 of life, sugar, cotton, indigo and rice. New- York receives 

 annually into her harbor more than 4,000 foreign and coasting 

 vessels; she employs 50,000 seamen, and so far back as 1850, in 

 less than one year, has built thirty-seven ships averaging 1150 

 tons each, while at the end of that year thirty-one more were 

 building of the same average tonnage. Of the whole sixty-eight 

 vessels, thirty-eight were steamers. Of the United States gen- 

 erally, (so long ago as 1841,) the mercantile marine of the Union 

 amounted to 2,180,764 tons, owned chiefly in the northern states, 

 and her annual imports to nearly 130 millions of dollars, her 

 exports being then- 107 millions. 



So long as six years ago, the entire capital invested in manu- 

 factures in the United States, (not including any establishments 

 producing less than the annual value of $500,) amounted in 

 round numbers to 530 millions of dollars. The value of the raw 

 material 550 millions, amount paid for labor 240 millions, the 

 value of manufactured articles was 1020 millions, and the num- 

 ber of persons employed in these manufactures a million and 

 fifty thousand. According to the census of 1840 the corn crop 

 of the United States was 377 millions of bushels; in 1852, it had 

 extended to 592,326,612 bushels. Of rice, tobacco and other 

 materials, the produce has been equally enormous. Of cotton the 

 average annual yield (terminating with 1850*) is more than three 

 millions of bales of 400 pounds each bale. Of sugar, ten mil- 

 lion pounds were made in 1815, on the banks of the Mississippi, 

 in 1850, it had reached the enormous quantity of 226 millions of 

 pounds, besides about twelve million gallons of molasses. 



The cash value of farms in 1850 was 3270 millions, value of 

 farming implements 152 millions, value of live stock 543 millions. 

 Of wheat, rye, Indian corn and oats, there were raised in the 

 states during 1850, no less than eight hundred and fifty-three mil- 

 lion five hundred and ninety-seven thousand and twenty-nine 

 (853,597,029) bushels, besides 215 million pounds of rice and 



