production and consumption. 31 
Mr. Andrews says that our 3,200 miles of canal, in 1851, moved 
about 6,000 tons per mile, 18,600,000 tons, valued at $1,880,000, 
000, while the railways moved only some 2,000 tons per mile, 
averaging for the like distance of canals, only 6,600,000 or about 
2-3 the amount moved by canal the same distance. 
Gross tons moved by Erie canal, in 1852. 18,000,000 
By coast trade. 40,794,980 
By rail. 10,815,000 
With such a stream of golden treasure pouring into, and pro¬ 
ceeding from New York, averaging from 3 to 5 times that of any 
other Atlantic city, is it strange that New York up to 1850, should 
double its population every 16 years, while Boston doubled hers 
once in 25J years, Philadelphia once in 20 years, Baltimore once 
in 27 years? 
FOX AND WISCONSIN RIVER IMPROVEMENT. 
The foregoing statistical facts and considerations bring us to 
the primary object of this discourse, and that is, to consider the 
relation which the Inland navigation through our state may bear 
to the great question of cheap transportation, and the equally im¬ 
portant questions of production, consumption and population. 
Every citizen, whether producer or consumer, must, per force, be 
interested in this problem. 
Since the great wheat center of the country has removed from 
Ohio to Iowa and Minnesota, and is fast encroaching on the 
boundary of Dakota, and as the Fox and Wisconsin Improvement 
is the first door of exit by water, these great centers can reach, on 
their way to tide water, it becomes a question of skilled states¬ 
manship, and not a mere question of party, and of bidding for 
votes, whether we will strive to open this door, as did New York, 
in her successful bid for the millions of Western commerce, by 
her Erie canal, or whether we will indolently fold our arms and 
compel our western neighbors to seek the only other water exit, 
by going 300 miles out of their 'way, only to find a more rugged, 
uncertain and contracted path, in the Illinois canal, with a cer¬ 
tainty of a perpetual blockade at Chicago, where the present lake 
shipping renders her single channel harbor “as thick as four in a 
bed.” We cannot think of reaching New York via the Gulf, our* 
