ceived. The fact is the same in relation to South America. The United States alone afford a net surplus of cotton above the weight of goods they buy back. This process seems to be on the increase, since all those distant nations, as they progress in wealth, demand machine goods. These are supplanting, apparently, the rude hand loom goods of China and India; and where the clothing of 200,000,000 is liable to undergo this change, the prospect is that, how great soever may be the increased production of cotton, it cannot keep pace with the demand for goods. We here have not alluded to the fact that India cotton is always mixed with that of the United States. When any quantity of cloth is made some United States cotton is required. While the demand upon England for manufactures has thus been extended, she has taken less than her usual proportion of the crop of the United States. In 1840, the crop was a large one, 2,177,835 bales; of this England took 1,246,791 bales, or nearly 60 per cent, and Europe took 629,212 bales, or rather less than 30 per cent. In 1859, the crop was 3,851,481 bales, and England took 2,019,252 bales, or 52 per cent, and Europe took 1,002,252 bales, or nearly as large a proportion as before. Thus England seems to loose her predominance in that market, while European countries raise their demand in proportion even to an immense crop, thus widening the market for the materials. The production of cotton in the United States has increased to an extent greater than the force of hands was once supposed equal to. The process has been so improved upon, more particularly in relation to picking, that what was once supposed incredible, viz., eight bales to the hand, has become common, and in many sections ten bales to the hand is obtained, and that accompanied by a considerable increase in the production of food. Hence the product of cotton increases, not only with the natural increase in the numbers of the workers, but also in the ratio of greater expertness. Other industries have also flourished. If we take the figures of the exports of Southern production for a series of years, we may observe the progress in this respect :—

Product per hand..

$244

9,951,023 21,074,038 3,000,000 5,200,000 14,796,150 31,455,241 34,084,883 74,640,307 101,834,616 204,104,923

$22.

$431

Total....... $37,934,111 $48,225,858 $92.268,860 $130,356,059 $262,546,824 Number hands... 1,543,688 2,009,053 2,487,355 3,119,509 4,000,000 $37 $65.6 The figures for naval stores, rice, and tobacco are the export values of the crops. The sugar and cotton are the values of the whole production. The result is, that the value per head of these articles, which increased 16 per cent from 1840 to 1850, increased 50 per cent in the last nine years. It must not, however, be supposed that this was all the products of that section. On the other hand, the production of those exported articles formerly involved the purchase of food for the hands employed in the production. At present a large portion of food is raised by the same hands in addition. This is a most interesting feature of Southern industry, yet but little understood. There have been no general returns of production since 1850, but we may compare the products of leading articles as given by the census of 1850:

These figures present facts somewhat different from the popular idea, which is, that for articles of general agriculture the North and West are much in excess of the South. The leading items of food and labor at the South, as at the North and West, are cattle, horses, mules, swine, and corn; "bacon and corn cakes," "hog and hominy" are the staples. Now the census figures show that in addition to the great export crops the South raises far more corn and pork than the other sections. The South had, in 1850, absolutely double the number of swine that the other sections held. It raised 109,000,000 bushels more corn than the whole North and West. It raised 100 bushels of corn for every black hand. The wheat was less in actual quantity; but there were raised five bushels of wheat for every white person, which is the same ratio as at the North. The South had more cattle of all kinds than the other section, and it is enabled to maintain them, because it is not compelled to house or make hay for the winter fodder, which are heavy drafts upon Northern labor imposed by the climate. The South had horses and mules, 2,571,365, and the North 2,324,685, an excess of 246,680 in favor of the South, and yet the latter States raised only 10 per cent of the hay that was raised at the North. Allowing the actual cost of making hay, in labor, &c., to be $5 per ton, the same number of cattle cost the North $44,000,000 more to keep them than at the South. The hay expense is, however, shared with the cattle of all kinds. These must be fed in the winter at the North, and that is not required at the South. In all that concerns agricultural prosperity the South has a decided advantage. The larger production of hay at the North has sometimes been appealed to as an evidence of its greater agricultural wealth, whereas it is only an evidence of a more disadvantageous climate. The Southern cattle obtain the same quantity of food as those of the North, that is, a quantity sufficient for their wants, but they obtain it themselves. Nature has it always ready for them. At the North, on the other hand, men have to cut the food in the summer, cure and preserve it for the winter, when the Northern animals could not get it for themselves. Analagous to this is the Northern coal industry. The South produces comparatively a small quantity, and needs but little in proportion to the requirements of a Northern winter. If the $35,000,000 worth of coal mined at the North is an evidence of wealth, it is also an evidence of the exactions of the climate. Nearly all the industry expended in coal mining and hay making is a tax upon Northern life, rather than an evidence of wealth. That portion of coal which is applied to transportation and manufactures is, of course, an element of production, but that used as fuel is a tax. The labor that, with a climate as severe as that at the North, would be required at the South to supply fuel and fodder, is now expended in raising cotton, sugar, and rice for export. If

we compare the weight and value of the articles, cotton, butter, cheese, tobacco, sugar, wool, rice, hemp, and flax, North and South, the results are as follows:

In these figures we find how rapidly the Southern States have concentrated within themselves the means of feeding the large working population, while they have been enabled to throw off from the same working force an annual surplus of those articles suitable for export; and in doing this it has more distinctly marked its position as the sole source for the supply of that great raw material for human clothing, the manufacture of which occupies so large a proportion of the population and capital of England and Europe. Not only the quantity of cotton per hand is as we have seen increasing, but its money value advances in the ratio of the spread of the markets for the goods and the prosperity of the people who buy in those markets. The production of this article increases in the ratio of the natural increase of the hands and of the larger quantities that they can raise. The progress of the United States crop has been in quantity, and in the average value at Liverpool, in the two last periods of eight years, as follows:

Such has been the vast results of this cotton product in the last eight years; an increase of 40 per cent in quantity was attended by an increase of 20 per cent in price, and there results an increase of 70 per cent in net proceeds. The next eight years indicate a still more considerable progress in the same direction.

Art. IV.-AMERICAN TRADE IN THE BLACK SEA.

THE results of the Crimean war were to attract much attention to the resources of the Black Sea and the Danube. The army expenditures in those regions stimulated the consumption of European fabrics, and gave an impulse to the export trade. The peculiar nature of the navigation required, however, a style of shipping adapted to it. This has been done to some extent, and the course of trade there, with some of its advantages and difficulties, has been pointed out in the following sketch by the United States Acting Consul at Constantinople, J. P. Brown, Esq.

CONSTANTINOPLE, December 2, 1859.

The trade of the United States in the Black Sea annually increases, as well as that with this port. During the last six months several American vessels of a peculiar construction from Cleveland, Ohio, and Chicago, Illinois, have passed through the Bosphorus, on their way to the Sea of

Azoff and the Danube. These vessels are nearly flat bottomed, with sliding keels, which enable them to navigate the shallow waters of that sea, and pass the bar of Sulina, in the mouth of the Danube, without being compelled to discharge a portion of their cargoes. It tells volumes for Yankee enterprise that such vessels should pass through the inland seas of the New World, and seek business in the most remote ones of the old hemisphere. Some of them came freighted to this port mostly with coal, and under charters for grain in the Danube. This new field offers occupation for a large number of such bottoms, and is worth the attention of enterprising ship builders and owners on the lakes.

The following letter from Taganrock, in the Sea of Azoff, is not without interest, and shows how Russia is allowed to diverge from the stipulations of her treaty with the "Allied Powers," with reference to the ports of the Black Sea. All the ports of the Circassian coast should be thrown open to foreign commerce. The Circassians on the western side of the Caucassus still hold out against the Czar's forces, but it is not believed that, with the naval force used as a blockade, this can continue long:

TAGANROCK, November 22, 1859.

Russia solemnly bound herself by the treaty of 1856 to acknowledge the neutrality of the Black Sea, and the free trade of all its ports, and to conform, in consequence, to the execution of the stipulations for which she has pledged her word in the face of all Europe. But what is the conduct of Russia? Under inadmissible pretexts of the abnormal state of Circassia, she closed the ports of the Circassian coast against foreign commerce, notwithstanding the protests of several States, and of the Circassian people. But Russia has not limited herself to this, for, discovering that the western cabinets seem to have forgotten how persistent she is in her policy, she has conceived the project of illuding entirely the stipulations of the treaty. Desirous to carry out her ambitious projects, but finding herself solemnly bound by treaties, she has recourse to all manner of schemes to ruin indirectly both the neutrality and free commerce of the Black Sea. You are aware that the trade of Europe with the Black Sea is carried on chiefly with the ports of Taganrock, Berdianska, and Marianopol, in the Sea of Azoff, which irrefutably is a tributary of the Black Sea. Russia is perfectly aware of all this, but what is she energetically scheming to do? She presumes to compel foreign vessels sailing to and from the aforementioned ports to load and unload henceforth at Kertch, a port contiguous to Yeni-Kaleh, and this under the unreasonable obligation of establishing the custom-house officers at the same port. It is superfluous to state that if the powers do not oppose this project, the neutrality and free commerce of the Black Sea, guarantied by the treaty of 1856, are but illusory, because indirectly undermined by this government, which, after levying enormous dues on the vessels passing through the Straits of Yeni-Kaleh, capriciously compels them now to load and unload at Kertch, and to discontinue carrying on freely and directly their operations with the ports of Marianopol, Berdianska, and Taganrock. Russia thus not only violates the treaty as far as it regards the Black Sea, but she deals a ruinous blow at the whole commerce of Europe in that quarter, which will now be much more restricted than it ever was before the treaty of 1856. Besides the aforementioned restrictions, another compulsory measure is to be adopted, namely, the

obliging every vessel to take for ballast iron and casks of water; in short, all these measures are adopted to monopolize the trade for the Russian steam navigation company, in which the aristocracy, ministers, and princes are interested, and which is dependent on the orders of his Highness the Grand Duke Constantine, Grand Admiral and Minister of the Marine, to the detriment of foreign nations. The Russian Government has moreover ordered that the Straits of Yeni-Kaleh shall be converted into a new Sebastopol, by erecting batteries on a level with the water on the coast and bank of that town, which will be able to keep up a cross fire with the opposite shore; 15,000 soldiers are employed in constructing the magazines, barracks, and redoubts of Yeni-Kaleh, as well as for the batteries and castles on the bank. Generals and officers of engineers are charged to hasten the termination of these military works, which will make of Yeni-Kaleh the Sebastopol of the Black Sea and the Cimerian Bosphorus.

We do not know the nature of the protests which the ambassadors of the European powers will make in St. Petersburg, but it is certain that the foreign trade, seeing itself thus arbitrarily acted upon, and justly alarmed, will have recourse to the most strenuous efforts to check this Muscovite monopoly of the Black Sea trade, and likewise to object to the construction of fortresses in the Straits of Yeni-Kaleh.

The following letter from the Danube will give some account of its trade for 1859:

IBRAILA, November 15, 1859. The trade of the Danube having now come nearly to a close for the year, it is time to have a review of the past and prospects for the ensuing year, 1860.

SOFT WHEAT. This crop turned out very favorable this year, as regards quality, in Moldavia, and consequently some very fine parcels were brought forward to Galatz. Not so, however, in Wallachia, where the generality of this produce was of very poor quality. Exception can, however, be made to what came from the mountainous part of the country. Choice parcels were first held up at very high prices, say from 30s. to 32s. per qr. f. o. b., owing to the low rates of freights, but as freights have latterly advanced, prices have given way considerably, and best parcels may now be quoted at 28s. a 30s. per qr. f. o. b.

HARD WHEAT. Owing to their being very slight demand for this article in the beginning of August last, prices of this produce were moderate in proportion; but a strong demand having shown itself for Naples, prices were run up from 28s. a 29s. to 32s. a 33s. 6d., and still continues firm. It is to be hoped that during the dead of the winter, once the Danube is frozen, prices of this article may also give way.

INDIAN CORN. This article, (crop of 1858,) not being of a particular good quality in Ibraila, could have been had in the months of May and June last at 13s. to 13s. 6d. per qr. f. o. b., and kept so all August, when it gradually rose in value, and is now at 17s. per qr., and as crop 1859, that will come forward in 1860, is considered much below an average in both provinces, prices are not likely to give way much in the winter for what remains of crop 1858. The crop in Moldavia was of a splendid quality, and always averages 18d. to 2s. a quarter more money.

BARLEY. This crop was very plentiful in Walachia, and not one-half