JOURNAL OF BANKING, CURRENCY, AND FINANCE. PAGE New York Bank Dividends for July...... 212 213 City Weekly Bank Returns-Banks of New York, Providence, Philadelphia, New Orleans, 213 Finances of the City of St. Louis..... 216 Finances of Sacramento.. 217 Finances of the City of St. Paul, Minnesota.-Milwaukee Finances.--Finances of Detroit..... 218 Fabrics of Cotton-Cotton Velvets-Fabrics of Cotton-Cotton Hosiery. 225 226 226 227 227 928 229 230 281 Fabrics of Wool-Gentionella Blankets.-Fabrics of Flax-Fancy Pack-Thread or Twine... 232 233 233 234 NAUTICAL INTELLIGENCE. Lights in the Dardanelles-Mediterranean. Light on Muckle Flugga--Shetland Isles, North Unst.... Lights on the Northwest Coast of Scotland.-Lights on the North and West Coasts of Scotland. 235 Light at Isle Ornsay, Sleat Sound-Scotland, Northwest Coast.... 234 235 Alteration in Color of Buoys--Scotland, East Coast.--Newly Invented Life-Buoy. 236 236 237 JOURNAL OF INSURANCE. Iowa Insurance Law. Fires in the City of Brooklyn for six months.... 238 239 Marine Insurance.--Rates for Canal and River Insurance in State of N. Y.--Insurance Frauds. 240 Cincinnati, Hamilton, and Dayton Railroad Company.- Welland Canal Tolls... 245 Prussian Railways.. 246 ...... Trade of the Dismal Swamp Canal.. 247 Railroad Statistics, &c.-Camden and Amboy Railroad and Delaware and Raritan Canal....... 248 JOURNAL OF MINING, MANUFACTURES, AND ART. 249 250 Manufactures in Massachusetts..... Lowell Manufactures.- Steam Boilers.. Manufacture of Lumber in St. Anthony.-Manufacturing Stocks.. STATISTICS OF AGRICULTURE, &c. Manufacture of Thimbles.... Seasons for Crops..... Live Stock in Illinois.. Agriculture of Massachusetts.. Value of Agricultural Products.--Grain Trade.. STATISTICS OF POPULATION, &c. 261 Agricultural state Fairs... Population of New York... 261 Population of Minnesota.--Mixed Races in Spanish America--The Beauties of Amalgamation. 262 God's Coffer; a Short Sermon for Merchants.--Production of Steel in Europe. 268 264 265 265 266 267 268 Girard, the Merchant, and the Man who minded his Business.-Woolen Mills on Pacific Coast. 269 THE BOOK TRADE. Notices of new Books or new Editions 270-272 HUNT'S MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE AND COMMERCIAL REVIEW. AUGUST, 1858. Art. I. THE MANUFACTURE, TRADE, AND CONSUMPTION OF TOBACCO. HISTORICAL AND STATISTICAL ACCOUNT OF THE MANUFACTURE, TRADE, AND CONSUMPTION OF TOBACCO IN THE AUSTRIAN EMPIRE, UNDER THE OPERATION OF THE GOVERNMENT MONOPOLY SYSTEM, FROM THE PERIOD WHEN THE MONOPOLY BY GOVERNMENT WAS EXTENDED OVER THE WHOLE OF THE AUSTRIAN DOMINIONS-FROM THE ARCHIVES OF THE AUSTRIAN TOBACCO DEPARTMENTFROM THE COMPILATION OF BARON VON PLENKER, CHIEF DIRECTOR OF THE IMPERIAL TOBACCO MANUFACTORIES OF AUSTRIA, COUNSELOR OF STATE, KNIGHT OF THE ORDER OF THE IRON CROWN, KNIGHT COMMANDER OF THE PAPAL ORDER OF GREGORY, ETC, ETC. [The following interesting details and statistics, in relation to the trade and manufacture of tobacco in the dominions of Austria, not only deserve attention on account of the interest and novelty of the valuable information communicated, but also a new and important question is hereby opened to the view of the statesman, and to the inquiry of the political economist. The trade in tobacco is co-extensive with the use of the plant, and its use, as is well known, extends over the whole civilized world. The number of persons employed in the preparation and manufacture of the plant, if we commence with the capital and hands employed agriculturally in its first production, and carry our inquiries up to the last stage of its progress to the hands of the consumer, when it is dealt out by the ounce or the half-ounce to the retail customer, must be immense, and is perhaps greater than would be credited. In the United States and in England, and perhaps in all other countries of any extent, except in Austria, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Italian States, the trade in tobacco is free and open to every one who has the capital and means to embark in it. It becomes, therefore, a question of national importance-a question well deserving a strict and deliberate inquiry-which of the two systems is the best; whether greater advantages result to the public from the free and open trade as it is carried on in the United States and in England, or whether the assumption of the whole business, both of the manufacture and sale of tobacco, by the government, is the better system? This is a question both novel and important, and is strongly presented and suggested by the following interesting information of the trade as carried on by the government exclusively. We do not mean, of course, to say that this question is propounded, or even adverted to, in the following history of the Austrian Monopoly, but we mean to say that after perusing the account of the trade and its results during many years in the dominions of Austria, the serious question must naturally be suggested to the intelligent reader, whether in our own country the Austrian system would not be much better than the free English system? Would not the public generally be spared a vast amount of direct and indirect taxation by collecting a large revenue from tobacco, instead of raising it by taxation? It is almost certain that if it be supposed that the State of New York, for example, were to take the manufacture and sale of tobacco into its own hands, the revenue derived from the trade would more than half defray the ordinary and extraordinary annual expenditures of the government; the people in the meantime would be benefited in a variety of ways-1st. They would be relieved from a very considerable amount of other direct and more onerous taxation. 2d. Not only the same number of persons and hands would be employed and obtain their livelihood by the trade, as now, but even a greater number would be employed. 3d. The article manufactured and sold would be of better quality, and consequently its use would be extended, etc., etc. This question and the inquiries it would lead to, as a mere matter of curiosity, is full of interest, and indeed it might at some future period become a subject of serious deliberation; for the spirit of the American people is essentially adverse to every system of direct taxation, and, at the same time, there is no system of indirect taxation so simple, light, and imperceptible as the system the results of which are given in the following pages. Before we form, however, any opinion on the subject of the comparative benefits and disadvantages of the two systems, it will be well first to make ourselves perfectly well acquainted with the subject. The following general and statistical account of the trade in tobacco, as carried on exclusively by the Austrian government as a system of indirect taxation, will throw much light on the subject. This is the first authentic history of the governmental monopoly of the tobacco trade which has appeared in this country, and we might even say in Europe; for hitherto France and Austria have not made known the details of this trade. The public generally in Europe know nothing more upon the subject than the too simple facts that the governments referred to derive a large revenue from their assumption into the hands of government of the manufacture and sale of tobacco, and the fact that they (the people) are supplied with a good and cheap article. On the other hand, in England, where the manufacture and trade is open and free to every speculator, all that is known is that the people are supplied with an article of necessary consumption, both very inferior in quality and very high in price. The following interesting details of the 'results of the governmental system have been obtained from official sources, from the Archives of the Austrian Tobacco Department, as compiled and published by M. Von Plenker, a gentleman high in rank in the Austrian Bureau, of whose rare work only two copies exist in the United States, viz., one in the Treasury Department in Washington, and the other in the private library of Ch. F. Loosey, Esq., the worthy and estimable Consul-General of Austria, at New York.] AMONG all the various products which form articles of consumption by the human family, and which are luxuries and superfluities, rather than necessities of life, (not being indispensable for the nourishment or sustenance of the body,) there is none which has become so wide-spread and universal in its use as tobacco. It is grown in every part of the world, and is used by every race and nation of the globe. Having first become known to Europe by the discovery of America, it soon became extensively used among Europeans; but strange as it may appear it met with opposition, and it may be said with persecution, both from ecclesiastical and secular powers-impediment such as has never befallen any other object of physical use and consumption. The severest punishments, however, which were enacted against those who used it, were unable to prevent its rapid spread, nor diminish its extensive use in every country of Europe, from North to South and from West to East. Even those governments which had been the foremost in enacting the severest penalties against its use soon found themselves willing to derive profits and revenue from the heavy duties imposed upon the persecuted weed. In the first half of the seventeenth century tobacco had already become an article of government monopoly in several States. This monopoly was first established in England in the year 1625, by Charles I., but shortly afterwards, in the time of the Cromwellian civil wars, the royal system of monopoly was abolished in that country, and the trade and manufacture was left free and open to any who wished to engage in it. A heavy duty upon the article was then substituted in place of the State monopoly. In 1657, tobacco was made a government monopoly at Venice, and about the same time in the Papal States. Portgugal adopted the same policy in 1664, and then France in 1674, Spain in 1730, and Mexico in 1764, Tuscany in 1737, Sardinia at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and Austria took into its own hands the monopoly of the manufacture and sale of tobacco in 1670. At the present day tobacco is an object of government monopoly in thirteen of the States of Europe, viz. :— The aggregate population which is supplied with the article of tobacco in all its forms of manufacture, by their respective governments, amounts to 116,297,000 souls, being 43.7 per cent of the entire population of Europe. In all the other States of Europe tobacco is subjected to a heavy taxation, both direct and indirect, and a very considerable revenue is thus obtained from it by all of them. When we reflect upon the immense increase in the use of tobacco within the last ten years, both in Europe and America, and that its consumption goes on increasing in every State of Europe, the subject of to bacco is one which deserves the consideration and attention of every government and country, both in respect to its cultivation and to its use. This There is, in fact, no other object of general consumption more fitted for indirect taxation than tobacco, nor any which brings in so large a revenue with so little perceptible inconvenience to the consumer. is a great advantage, of which statesmen are enabled to avail themselves for increasing the national revenue. The statistical accounts of the produce of the tobacco monopoly in the Austrian Empire afford abundant evidence of the fact that there is no other branch of revenue so productive as that of tobacco. On the 29th of November, 1850, the Austrian tobacco monopoly was extended by Imperial Decree over Hungary, the military frontiers, and the coast districts, and went into effect on the 1st of March, 1850. By this measure the operation of the Austrian Imperial Tobacco Monopoly was extended over an additional extent of territory of 5,855 square geographical miles, containing a population of above fourteen millions of souls. The monopoly has, therefore, since then, been extended over all the lands and counties subject to the Austrian crown. The introduction of the governmental tobacco monopoly into the kingdom of Hungary met with great opposition at first in several quarters. It was even said by a great number of persons that the measure was altogether impracticable, and that it could not be carried out successfully. The result, however, has proved that the difficulties were not so great as had been imagined. The system is now thoroughly established, and is in the most flourishing condition. The principles applied by the government in relation to the compensation paid to the persons previously engaged in the trade and manufacture of tobacco, were such as exercised a very important influence in removing the difficulties which had been apprehended. By the terms of the Imperial Decree of November 29th, 1850, those persons who held a stock of unmanufactured tobacco, as also all the manufacturers of tobacco, were at liberty either to sell their tobacco to the Imperial treasury within a specified time, at fair prices to be agreed upon, or on the other hand they were left at liberty to export their stock on hand to foreign countries. It was also furthermore provided, that those persons who could prove that they had, for at least five years, been regularly engaged in the tobacco business, should receive a compensation for their business, either in a yearly rent to be paid to them, or in the immediate payment of a fixed sum, or by other methods, according to the average net profits of their business. Others received compensation by being appointed to situations in the financial or other departments of the State Tobacco Manufactory. When the Imperial monopoly went into operation the stocks of every description in the hands of dealers were purchased by the treasury of the Imperial monopoly. The stock of raw tobacco in the hands of the manufacturers was paid for according to the price at which it had been purchased by them, with the addition of six per cent upon the cost price, reckoned from the day when the purchase had been made to the day of payment. Manufactured tobacco, in a state ready for sale, was paid for at the price which appeared by the tradesman's own books, to afford the same profit at wholesale prices which he had calculated upon. According to these regulations, and on these principles, the sum of |