The leading manufacturing industries are the sawing of lumber and the production of resin, tar, pitch, turpentine oil, cotton-seed oil, tobacco, flour, and the smelting of ores. In 1870 there were 3.642 manufacturing establishments in the state, employing 13,622 hands, and using $8,140.473 in capital, raw material valued at $12,824,693, and producing goods worth $19,021.327. Of these establishments there were 147 tar and turpentine works; 227 flouring and grist mills; 104 sawmills; 33 cotton-mills; 110 tobacco factories; 1 zinc smelting and rolling works: and 130 carriage and wagon fac tories. The state has four U. S. customs districts—Alliemarle, Beaufort, Pamlico, and Wilmington; and it exports, coastwise and to foreign countries, large quantities of tar, turpentine, and resin, lumber, cotton, tobacco, flour, and fish. During 1870 the ship:n nts of resin and turpentine amounted to 426.395 barrels, valued at $1,159,022; and of tar and pitch 17,660 barrels, worth $42,824. The fisheries of North Carolina are more important than any others on the southern coast, the annual catch amounting usu all• to 100.000 barrels. The kinds caught are chiefly the herring, shad, bluefish, mullet, and rock.
The number of railroads lying wholly or partly in the state in 1875 was 17, and the number of miles of road in operation 1488. The most important of these roads are the North Carolina railroad, 223 m. long; the western North Carolina, 250 m.; the Wilming ton and with a branch running from Tarboro to Rocky Mount, 181 m.; the Atlantic and North Carolina, 95 m. ; the Raleigh and Gaston, 97 m.; and the Wilming ton and Columbia. 65 m. within the state. The Dismal Swamp canal, lying in North Carolina and Virginia, affords communication betweenAlbemarle sound and Chesapeake bay. The number of national banks in the state in 1875 was 11, having an aggregate capital of $2.200,000, and an outstanding circulation, secured by U. S. bonds, of $1,824,545. Th*0 were also 8 state banks, with an'aggregato capital of $1,697.000; and 3 savings banks, loan, and trust companies, whose capital amounted to $180,000. Two fire insurance companies, one at Raleigh and the other at Warrenton, possessed assets amounting to $264,827; and there was also one life insurance company at Raleigh with a capiml of $200,000, and assets amounting to $212,000.
Financially, the state has never been in a very satisfactory condition since the war. The ante-war debt in 1874 amounted to $8,878,200. but several railroad operations, together with other liabilities incurred by the state, brought up the aggregate indebted ness that year to $38,921,848, of which about $10,000,000 was for_ due and unpaid inter est. In 1879, however, the state treasurer reported to the legislature that the total amount of the debt, principal and interest, was $27,120,227. This legislature passed an net "to compromise, commute, and settle." On bonds issued before the war (except for the North Carolina railroad) it proposed to pay 40 per cent of the principal. Other bonds were made redeemable at 25 per cent, and sonic even at 15 per cent of the princi pal. The settlement determined upon was to give, in exchange for the outstanding bonds, new thirty-year coupon bonds, dated July 1, 1880, bearing I per cent interest, payable aunually% In 1874 the total property of the state, real and personal, was assessed at $143,729,813, which included land valued at $76,959,193; town property, $16,652,131; horses, mules, cattle, etc., $18,214,692; and farming utensils, money on hand or deposit,
etc., $31,807,70. The amount raised by tax for state purposes is about $1,200,000.
A fund for the support of common schools was created by the legislature in 1825, and certain stocks, owned by the state, in banks and navigation companies, with all moneys paid into the public treasury for entries of swamp and other vacant lands, were set aside to meet this need. During the next fifteen years the fund was enlarged in various ways until, in 1840, it amounted to $2,000,000. This IV:IS destroyed, however, by the war, and the new constitution of 1868 provided that 75 per cent of the entire state and county capitation tax, together with the revenue derived from certain fines, forfeitures, and penalties, should be devoted to school pnrposes. At present about $300,000 is expended annually, and the public schools are kept open four months each year. A state superintendent, assisted by county commissioners and district committees, has control and supervision of the system. In 1870 the number of children in the state between the ages of 5 and 18 was 1159,930, of whom 135,845 were colored. The 1111111 bar attending school was 65,301, of whom 11.419 were colored. In 1878, however, the repOrt was considerably more favorable, the number of white' pupils attending school during that year having been 145,155, and of colored 81,290: Substantial aid is received also from the Peabody educational fund, which maintains, during ten months of the year, from 20 to 30 graded schools, each having from 100 to 500 pupils. Besides these public school advantages the state has six colleges: the North Carolina university at Chapel Hill, chartered in 1793; North Carolina college (Lutheran), at Mt. Pleasant; Wake Forest college (Baptist), Forestville; Rutherford college (unsectarian), at Excel sior; Trinity college (Methodist), at Trinity; Davidson college (Presbyterian), at David son; and Shaw university (Baptist, for colored students, male and female), at Raleigh. Several of .these colleges have preparatory, theological, scientific, other speeial courses; and there are within the state many academies and seminaries of respectable rank, among which may be the Ellendale teachers' institute at Little River, and the Williston academy and normal school at Wilmington. Of the total number of libraries throughout the state, reported in 1870, there were 1746, containing about 541,915 volumes, of which 1090 were private. The newspapers and periodicals published amount to about 102, there being 10 daily papers. 80 weeklies, 4 monthlies, etc. The religious organizations, by the census of 1870, numbered 2,683, and possessed 2,497 edi fices with 718,310 sittings, and property valued at $2.487,877. The denominations represented were: Baptist, 985; Christian, 66; Congregational, 1; Protestant Episcopal, 77; Friends, 28; Jewish, 1; Lutheran, 73; Methodist, 1193; Moravian, 10; Presbyterian, 204: German reformed, 31; Roman Catholic, 10; Universalist, 2.