THE PRODUCTIONS OF THE EARTH.
No subject can more deeply interest the planters and farmers of this country. Our merchants can export every American production without duty, tax or impediment. We have all the benefits of a foreign, coasting, and interior trade, free as to our own laws, and the national government are constantly engaged in negotiations and regulations calculated to soften or remove the inconveniences of foreign monopolies in commerce and navigation. Such measures are pending now with Britain and France.
When trade has exhausted its power to find a profitable market, abroad or at home, the conversion of our unsaleable surplus produce into new forms, commonly denominated domestic manufactures, becomes an object of reasonable consideration. It is well known, that the cultivated soil and the bowels of the earth give us the following principal objects as the fruits of the culture of the land, or as its spontaneous productions. 1, Hemp; 2, Flax; 3, Wool; 4, Iron; 5, Silk; 6, Hides and Skins; 7, Sugar; 8, Indigo, Woad, Madder; 9, Grass; 10, Grain; 11, Wood; 12, Tobacco, and 13, Cotton. Such has long been the unforced state of our manufacturing industry, that in 1797, in 1810, and in 1819, we did not export any surplus or quantity, however small, of the first eight of those valuable productions. Our manufacturers, without the war or double, or present duties, bought at home and worked up the whole. The returns of exports prove, that we did not ship any part of several of those articles, and if we shipped a little of some, we imported a greater weight and value of the same kinds of foreign produce or raw materials.
Of the 9th article, Grass or Hay, we shipped very little, screwed into compact bundles for the West Indies.
Of the 10th, Grain, with some Fruit and Molasses, we have a brewery and distillery, a cider and general liquor manufacture, equal to forty millions of gallons, and requiring a quantity of produce equal to the value of sixteen millions of bushels of grain, of which above seven-eighth parts are drawn from our own lands. This is equal to the value of seven millions of barrels of flour, and we did not ship to foreign countries, in 1819, more than 750,000 barrels. It is plain, that the liquor manufactories of the United States (to which we are adding wine, worth to France 100,000,000 dollars,) are a very principal support of our agriculture.—We also make of grain, quantities of starch, hair-powder, sizing, paste, ship bread, wafers and vermicelli, hominy, firmity, soft bread, pastry and other preparations of grain. It is converted into fatted cattle, hogs and poultry. Ingenuity is and should be on the stretch to employ and profitably consume grain. Pork and beef maintain better prices abroad than the grain (or meal thereof,) with which we feed cattle and hogs. The prohibition of spirits, and the distillation of molasses, in St. Domingo, will cut off our supply of molasses.
Of the 11th article, Wood, we have now one manufacture (our sea vessels, coasters, river and other boats,) worth 40 or 50 millions of dollars. We manufacture, for exportation, from 120 to 180 millions of staves, heading, hoops, boards, scantling, plank, and we have an immense cooperage for foreign and domestic sale and use. Besides buildings, fences, cabinet ware, carriages, ploughs, harrows, handspikes, turnery, boxes, cases, faggots, cord-wood, &c. &c., to a vast amount, profiting the owners and clearers of wood lands.
12. Tobacco, of which we manufacture nearly all we consume, and fabricate as much for exportation, probably, as we import in a manufactured state for our consumption. We could manufacture a quantity of tobacco equal to the supply shipped by all Europe.
Of Cotton, we are supposed to manufacture 30,000,000 of pounds, shipping above three times that weight to foreign countries. We yearly increase in the goodness, fineness, utility, variety and value of our cotton manufactures. The looms of the United States were, in A. D. 1810, 325,000, of which North Carolina and Virginia, cotton and wool states, had the most, being each nearly 41,000 looms. The water and steam are well established, and work lower than the cheapest hand looms of Europe or Asia.
The plain instruction, of these genuine facts, to our planters and farmers, is, to encourage household manufactures, and all other manufactures on the estates, at the doors, in the townships, villages, and counties in which they live, consuming raw materials, building materials, food for man and beast, fuel, drinks, and other productions of the earth. This system of adjacent manufactures saves all the cost of transportation of our productions to the sea-ports, and the expense of carrying foreign goods from the sea-ports to the interior, more profitable than canals and turnpike roads.
Every judicious member of the agricultural body must be a friend to the freedom and encouragement of our foreign commerce, as affording a constant and sure market for a considerable portion of the productions of the earth. But, that manufactures afford also a very great and sure market for a larger variety, quantity and value of our landed productions, is no less manifest and certain. The nail mill, the paper mill, the screw mill, the brewery, the spinning and weaving mills, the calico printing mill, the pottery, and many other works and arts to fabricate useful necessary supplies out of our raw materials, will (including all our manufactures) be worth, in the whole of 1820, more than five times the value of our exported goods for sale in foreign countries. Let every farmer, planter, iron-master, &c., therefore, encourage manufactures in his household, on his estate, and in his neighbourhood, as the surest method of making a profitable home demand, without the expense of transportation, for the fruits of his labour, and the natural productions of his forests, mines and quarries. We purposely avoid to urge forcing and protecting duties, referring only to those existing, which have been ordained principally for the purpose of raising the requisite public revenue. We do not interfere in the agitation of the question about protecting duties. We believe the cheapness of produce and labour and improved machinery and labour-saving processes, will occasion manufactures to prosper and increase, and thus to support the growers of produce and the owners of the land, beyond even our free and valuable trade. To this, the duties laid for revenue, for defence, and for the encouragement of agriculture, will materially contribute; such as the impost upon East India cotton goods, of 271⁄2 to 621⁄2 and even 80 and 90 per cent., as made entirely of foreign cotton, rival to our cotton, flax, hemp, wool and silk.
FOR THE RURAL MAGAZINE.