One hundred and eighty, or perhaps more, incorpo rated or associated Banks and Ensurance companies, manifest an extensive internal and foreign trade. Their capitals were ninety or one hundred millions of dollars, in 1807.
The manufactures of the United States consume all our wool, which amounts to thirteen millions of pounds weight per annum. They also consume all our flax, hemp, hides and skins, iron and lead, and much of our cotton. Besides our own productions of these things we import much iron, hides and skins, flax, hemp, lead, and some wool. All of these are manufactured. There appears the best reason to affirm, that three fourth-parts of all the manufactures consumed in the United States, are made in our own families, shops, and manufactories. Ships and vessels, distilled spirits, beer, loaf sugar cheese, starch, as well as hats, shoes, iron wares, and piece goods are meant to be included.
Any apparent decrease in the substance of our ex ports is fully made up by the increase of our manufac tures. This will be evident, if we consider that our produce in 1811 was within 7 per cent. of our greatest former year, and that of the 60,000000 dollars, ui lo reign goods, exported in 1807, a considerable quantity, as in other trading coumries, merely passed through our ports. It is believed, that the increase in the cot ton manufacture alone, for home consumption, is equal to the decrease of the exports co our own produce and manufactures. The decrease in the importation of fo reign distilled spirits, and of molasses as the foreign material for spirits, is countervailed by the increase of the breweries and distilleries. Tnese produce an in crease of the domestic cooperage to make up for the loss of the exportation of hoops, heading and staves. The breweries and distilleries of Pennsylvania alone have been estimated at four millions of dollars for the year 1810. They were greater in 1811, and since ruin and brandy are greatly advanced in price, the bresa cries and distilleries will flourish in 1812, far beyond all past times.
The Merino breed of sheep is obtained in the United States so as to ensure to us the utmost quantity of fine wool, which we can want for our own use ; and as our landed capital is, in effect, unlimited, the increase of the fine woolled Merinos, and of our own large stock of ex cellent common woolled sheep, must be rapid and is certain. The breeds of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, and Teeswater in England, are not yet numerous ill the United States. Their value to us has lately become
known ; and they will of course be industriously and carefully increased. In the mean time strong cotton substitutes for cheap woollen goods arc judiciously ma nufactured. Many persons in this country are convinced, that the exclusion of cotton goods from countries, which do not make them out of our cotton, is necessary to the prosperity of our agriculture, and the most sure method of establishing for ever the cotton manulacture. It is justly considered also as a measure which will aid the growers and manufacturers of flax and hemp.
The people of America have proved the benefits to themselves of manufactures in their own families, by their female weavers, by labour-saving machinery and by labour-saving processes. The manufactures of red and white lead, For example, have suddenly absorbed all of that raw material, which we can procure from our own mines and by the most industrious importation. The shot manufactory has been added in the same mo ment.
A few mills to roll, slit, and cut iron, and to make it into nails, have made a complete revolution in that branch. Machinery to bore cannon and small arms, and to grind, cut and polish iron or steel, is spreading over the face of the country. The art of casting the various metals, of much importance to the value of our forests, is greatly extended and improved. Operations by steam have become frequent and familiar ; and the pendulum mill, moved by the multiplication of the lever power, promises a new and curious aid in every situation, how ever destitute of water and fuel, as the means of obtain ing the ordinary moving powers. To engrave the let ters, figures and emblems on a half-dollar piece would occupy a considerable portion of a day. But the steam angine and machinery of Bolton and Watt, at Soho in England, manufactures thirty thousand pieces of coin in a single hour. To reduce a pound of metal to the white lead pigment, by die labour of a chemist, would be an operation of time ; but a few hands, in a little ( heap budding on the back of a house lot, call effect the inanu kieture of hundreds of tons in the course of a year, by the known labour-saving process. This paint is the most simply elegant and useful, which is consumed in architecture ; and it is the basis olmany, which are du rable and exquisite.