by the clink of gold. Its future is great with possibilities. Some may say that the value of gold lasts, for it continues while coal passes away after its initial use; but is the latter assertion by any means correct? What has been the effect of the discovery of coal in developing this vast country? Where the savage roamed in search of food and foe, mill and factory chimneys now belch forth a smoky incense to the goddess of commerce, accompanied by a chant of whirring wheels and the vibration of a complete system of machinery. Cities have risen on plains which once resounded to the thundering hoofs of the buffalo. The throb of steam craft has been felt by streams formerly the exclusive haunts of the alligator or beaver. The earth has been ransacked for its treasures, and dreary wildernesses have been transformed into smiling homesteads, orchards and farms. The whole country has been covered by a network of railroads, spreading into Canada and Mexico. The port of New-York is, with one exception, the greatest in the world, and its foreign, coast and river steamship service is unsurpassed for speed, comfort and luxury, and all this is due to the expanding coal trade. American mining is carried on so largely by means of drift mines at present that it is a marvel to the foreigner to find how cheaply, in a comparative sense at least, coal is put on the railroad cars at the mine tipple in this country. Abroad, the mine owner must sometimes go to a depth of two thousand feet for his thin seam of coal, while in this country the drift into the side of a hill, on a seam of coal running up to seven feet is in no sense unusual. Our foreign trade, apart from that to the countries to the north and south of us, has not amounted to much in recent years. Something was done in 1901, and then came along the higher figures due to our industrial activity and other causes. Now that prices of bituminous coal have been reduced to something like normal, there is again opening up the possibility of entering in, at certain places, in competition with British coal. What is needed is vessels to carry it at a fair rate of freight, and then can be made another feature in the long list of American invasions. One thing that is eminently satisfactory is the fact that the American Navy, no matter in what part of the world it is located, now has its furnaces fed with the product of American mines. STATISTICS OF TRADE AND FINANCE. FOREIGN IMPORTS, DOMESTIC EXPORTS AND FOREIGN EXPORTS OF THE PORT OF NEW-YORK. VALUE OF FOREIGN IMPORTS INTO THE PORT OF NEW-YORK FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS, ENDED DECEMBER 31ST. VALUE OF EXPORTS FROM THE PORT OF NEW-YORK TO FOREIGN PORTS FOR THE LAST TWENTY YEARS, ENDED DECEMBER 31ST. |