70 Mitchill'S View of the Manufactures 
quent instances of incompleteness or inaccuracy. With 
this may be contrasted the return from Pennsylvania, 
which evinces an extent of research, on the part of Mr. 
Smith, honourable to him as an officer, and exhibits the 
manual arts and trades of the commonwealth to which he 
belongs, in a highly advantageous light. Their numbers 
and kinds are displayed with extraordinary detail, both 
as to the branches carried on and capital employed. 
I nevertheless undertook the task of making a general 
abstract, and of deducing a sort of comprehensive table. 
I began with the return of Mr. Curtenius, from New- 
York, and entered the total sums of his several articles 
in one line upon a sheet of paper. There I recorded the 
867 tanneries, 491 distilleries, 42 breweries, 33,068 
looms, 467 fulling-mills, 413 carding machines, 26 cotton 
manufactories, 28 paper-mills, 124 hatteries, 6 glass- 
houses, 2 powder-mills, 18 rope-walks, 10 refineries of 
sugar, 28 oil-mills, 11 blast-furnaces, 10 air-furnaces, 44 
cut-nail manufactories, and 48 forges, with some other 
things, particularly the cloths manufactured in that ex- 
tensive commonwealth. On attempting, however, to ar- 
range the other returns under the same heads, I found 
great difficulties in the way. For, though Connecticut, 
North Carolina, Kentucky, and indeed most of the states 
and territories, corresponded very well to a certain num- 
ber of titles, yet many of the latter were so difform and 
various, that it was impossible to class them under cor- 
responding heads. 
There were further difficulties. Maine was observed 
by a different officer from him who took the census of 
Massachusetts. The return from that district is so un- 
like the one made by the other marshal, that it is ex- 
tremely difficult, if not impossible, to make them corre- 
spond and harmonize. I despaired, therefore, of effecting 
a reconcilement in the returns from the two parts of Mas- 
