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.
EXTRACTED FROM THE MANUSCRIPT COLLECTIONS OF C. E.
On the increase of the Domestic Sugar of the United States.
It would seem to be a great acquisition to our country, if we could produce from our own soil whatever sugar might be necessary for our own consumption, without having recourse to foreign Islands or nations; it will therefore be satisfactory, I apprehend, to all lovers of their country to find that we are already making rapid advances, as will appear to any person who attentively weighs the following items of information, collected at different times from our public newspapers; from whence it may be inferred, that before many years have expired a supply sufficient for our own use will be furnished within our own territories.
1812, January 10—Albert Gallatin, Esq. then Secretary of the Treasury, informed the Committee of Ways and Means, in a letter, that the Western States were then entirely supplied with salt of domestic produce; and that they consumed annually seven millions of pounds of sugar, made from the Sugar Maple tree, which, says he, is nearly all they use. Now, if in 1812 the Western States produced 7,000,000 pounds of sugar from such trees, it is probable that in 1820, they would produce not less than 10,000,000 in a year. If to this we add what is yielded in the states of Vermont, New York, and Pennsylvania, it seems likely that the whole amount of such sugar, now made annually in the United States, is not less than 15 millions of pounds.
By a publication in a late newspaper, it appears that there were exported from New Orleans, in six months preceding 1st May, 1820, 15,652 hogsheads of sugar; all this no doubt was of their own growth and produced from the Sugar Cane. I am informed by a dealer in sugar, that the sugar hogsheads of New Orleans do not average less than 1000 pounds to each hogshead, making, in six months, 15,652,000 pounds, and in the whole year probably 20,000,000 pounds; total of sugar from the Sugar tree and Cane, 35,000,000 pounds annually. This exhibits a very rapid increase in the amount of sugar made, as I think Secretary Gallatin, in an older communication, not 20 years ago, stated that New Orleans at that time exported only about 2,000,000 of pounds of sugar.
The supply now furnished as above will probably be greatly augmented in future years, from the same sources.