'The homestead privilege will largely increase immigration. Now, besides the money brought here by immigrants, the Census proves that the average annual value of the labor of Massachusetts per capita was, in 1860, $220 for each man, woman, and child, independent of the gains of commerce—very large, but not given. Assuming that of the immigrants at an average annual value of only $100 each, or less than thirty-three cents a day, it would make, in ten years, at the rate of 100,000 each year, the following aggregate:
| 1st | year | 100,000 = 10,000,000 |
| 2d | " | 200,000 = 20,000,000 |
| 3d | " | 300,000 = 30,000,000 |
| 4th | " | 400,000 = 40,000,000 |
| 5th | " | 500,000 = 50,000,000 |
| 6th | " | 600,000 = 60,000,000 |
| 7th | " | 700,000 = 70,000,000 |
| 8th | " | 800,000 = 80,000,000 |
| 9th | " | 900,000 = 90,000,000 |
| 10th | " | 1,000,000 = 100,000,000 |
| ————— | ||
| Total, $550,000,000 |
'In this table the labor of all immigrants each year is properly added to those arriving the succeeding year, so as to make the aggregate the last year 1,000,000. This would make the value of the labor of this million of immigrants in ten years, $550,000,000, independent of the annual accumulation of capital, and the labor of the children of the immigrants (born here) after the first ten years, which, with their descendants, would go on constantly increasing.
'But, by the official returns (p. 14, Census), the number of alien immigrants to the United States, from December, 1850, to December, 1860, was 2,598,216, or an annual average of 260,000.
'The effect, then, of this immigration, on the basis of the last table, upon the increase of national wealth, was as follows:
| 1st | year | 260,000 = 26,000,000 |
| 2d | " | 520,000 = 52,000,000 |
| 3d | " | 780,000 = 78,000,000 |
| 4th | " | 1,040,000 = 104,000,000 |
| 5th | " | 1,300,000 = 130,000,000 |
| 6th | " | 1,560,000 = 156,000,000 |
| 7th | " | 1,820,000 = 182,000,000 |
| 8th | " | 2,080,000 = 208,000,000 |
| 9th | " | 2,340,000 = 234,000,000 |
| 10th | " | 2,600,000 = 260,000,000 |
| ————— | ||
| Total, $1,430,000,000 |
'Thus, the value of the labor of the immigrants, from 1850 to 1860, was $1,430,000,000, making no allowance for the accumulation of capital, by annual reinvestment, nor for the natural increase of this population, amounting, by the Census, in ten years, to about twenty-four per cent. This addition to our wealth, by the labor of the children, in the first ten years, would be small; but in the second and each succeeding decade, when we count children, and their descendants, it would be large and constantly augmenting. But the Census shows that our wealth increases each ten years at the rate of 126.45 per cent. (Census Table 35.) Now, then, take our increase of wealth, in consequence of immigration, as before stated, and compound it at the rate of 126.45 per cent. every ten years, and the result is largely over $3,000,000,000 in 1870, and over $7,000,000,000 in 1880, independent of the effect of any immigration succeeding 1860. If these results are astonishing, we must remember that immigration here is augmented population, and that it is population and labor that create wealth. Capital, indeed, is but the accumulation of labor. Immigration, then, from 1850 to 1860, added to our national products a sum more than double our whole debt on the 1st of July last, and augmenting in a ratio much more rapid than its increase, and thus enabling us to bear the war expenses.'
As the homestead privilege must largely increase immigration, and add especially to the cultivation of our soil, it will contribute vastly to increase our population, wealth, and power, and augment our revenues from duties and taxes.
As this domain is extended over fifteen States and all the Territories, the completion of these enlarged canals, embracing so large a portion of them, would be most advantageous to all, and the inducement to immigration would greatly increase, and immigration must soon flow in from Europe in an augmented volume. Indeed, when these facts are generally known in Europe, the desire of small renters, and of the working classes, to own a farm, and cultivate their own lands here, must bring thousands to our shores, even during the war. But it will be mainly when the rebellion shall have been crushed, the power of the Government vindicated, its authority fully reëstablished, and slavery extinguished, so as to make labor honorable everywhere throughout our country, and freedom universal, that this immigration will surge upon our shores. When we shall have maintained the Union unbroken against foreign and domestic enemies, and proved that a republic is as powerful in war as it is benign in peace, and especially that the people will rush to the ranks to crush even the most gigantic rebellion, and that they will not only bear arms, but taxes, for such a purpose, the prophets of evil, who have so often proclaimed our Government an organised anarchy, will lose their power to delude the people of Europe. And when that people learn the truth, and the vast privileges offered them by the Homestead Bill, there will be an exodus from Europe to our country, unprecedented since the discovery of America. The wounds inflicted by the war will then soon be healed, and European immigrants, cultivating here their own farms, and truly loyal to this free and paternal Government, from which they will have received this precious gift of a farm for each, will take the place of the rebels, who shall have fled the country. We have seen that the total cost of our railroads and canals, up to this date, was $1,335,285,569, and I have estimated the probable cost of these enlarged works as not exceeding one tenth of this sum, or $133,528,556. Let us now examine that question. We have seen that our 4,650 miles of canals cost $132,000,000, being $28,387 per mile, or less, by $8,395 per mile, than our railroads. It will be recollected that a large number of miles of these canals have already the requisite depth of seven feet, and width of seventy, and need only an enlargement of their locks. It appears, however, by the returns, that the Erie canal, the Grand Junction, Champlain canal, and the Black River, Chemung, Chenango, and Oswego, in all 528 miles, are all seven feet deep, and seventy feet wide, and cost $83,494 per mile, while the average cost of all our canals, varying from forty to seventy-five feet in width, and from four to ten in depth, was $28,387 per mile. Assuming $28,000 per mile as the average cost of the canals requiring enlargement, and $83,000 that of those per mile having already the requisite dimensions, the difference would be $55,000 per mile, as the average cost of those needing increased dimensions.
The estimated cost, then, would stand as follows: