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built upon the beautiful little islands in the East River, whose green slopes rise from the rapid current, near Hell Gate. On Blackwell's Island, the largest of the group, are the Penitentiary, the Lunatic Asylum and the City Alms Houses; on Ward's Island are the extensive hospitals for diseased immigrants; and on Randall's Island the nurseries for the city orphans.

One of the most prominent of the structures belonging to the city is the Croton Reservoir, between 40th and 42d streets, which is sufficiently familiar to all the visitors to the Crystal Palace. This immense granite structure, built as solidly and likely to endure as long as the pyramids, is the beaker out of which a population not much below a million drink their daily draughts; it is the great fountain of health and comfort to the entire population of our mighty metropolis, whence their fountains and hydrants are daily supplied. It seems scarcely possible that such a reservoir, vast as it is, should contain a sufficient quantity of water to feed the almost innumerable drains that are constantly running from it. But this Egyptian reservoir on Murray

Hill, which looks so vast, holds but twenty millions of gallons of water; a mere punch bowl, compared with the receiving reservoir lying between 79th and 86th streets, covering an area of thirty-five acres, and containing one hundred and fifty millions of gallons, while this, again, is but a wine cooler in comparison with the first reservoir at the Croton River, forty miles distant, among the breezy hills of Westchester, which is five miles long. These immense reservoirs are trifling when compared with the whole aqueduct, which is forty miles in length, and, by the side of which all aqueducts of ancient and modern times are dwarfed. The most impressive and majestic of the visible parts of this splendid work is the High Bridge across the Harlem River. This aqueduct bridge is the most magnificent structure which New-York can boast of; it is 1450 feet in length, and 114 feet above the level of high water; through this lofty artery flows the daily life of nearly a million of inhabitants, and it is appalling to think of the consequences of an accident to so important an agent in supplying the daily needs of so vast a population.

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THE NATIONAL INVENTORY.

COLUMN of figures is said to be, and undoubtedly is, dry,-as dry as an old logarithm-and yet, there are circumstances in which one may get from it a deal of succulent nutriment. The merchant, no doubt, who finds his long array of numerals with a balance on the right side of his ledger, thinks these more interesting than the best romance of Dickens or a poem by Longfellow. He relishes them, revels in them, rubs his hands over them, reads them several times, and is a happy man. A political candidate, too, the morning after an election peruses the endless lines of decimals, in his daily paper, with the intensest zest, forgetting the startling news on the next page, and quite unconscious, shame upon him, of the fine moral disquisitions of the editor in the very next paragraph. On the sum of these figures, perhaps, hangs his life or death, the success of his long-cherished and splendid schemes of ambition, or the extinction of his hopes for ever.

Figures, therefore, are not always as fleshless as skeletons. They have a very present life in them, and may carry with them a fascination beyond figures of speech. It is a simple work, perhaps, the putting them together, but once rightly arranged, they hold the most significant meanings.

Our census, it must be confessed, has been a long while coming. It was taken in the year 1850, and has just, at the opening of 1854, come from the printer's hands. Doubtless it has been a severe and laborious task to bring it into order, to compute and collate the separate returns of the marshals who were deputed to gather the facts; but severe and laborious as it must have been, we are forced to believe that there has been no adequate occasion for the delay. We ought to have been in possession of it, at least one year ago; and we would have been, if the business of the bureaus at Washington were conducted with the economy of time and the rapidity of action, which characterize the business of individuals. Alas! public employments are the rewards of serviceable partisans, and not the duties of competent men; every kind of official service is turned into a job; and the interest of the functionary in maintaining his place soon supersedes his interest in public business. Mr. De Bow, the superintendent of the department, we suppose, and his predecessor before him, Mr.

Kennedy, have been as industrious as they could be, under the circumstances: we say nothing against them; but, whatever the cause of this protracted gestation, we complain of it, with the loudest emphasis.

The United States is the last country in the world, where such dilatory movement ought to be allowed; because it is precisely the country where changes and advances of all kinds are effected with such celerity, that a census four years old would be almost as much out of date as a four years old almanac. A story is told of a gentleman of Chicago, who spent two years in travelling in Europe; that when he returned, he was compelled to hire a porter to conduct him to the street he lived in, and the next day he confessed that he knew less of his own town than any he had seen in the whole course of his travels. Thus, our cities and their populations, and industries, grow out of our remembrance in the course of a few circles of the sun, and unless the inventories of them are published as soon as they are ascertained, they lose half their value, and pretty nearly all their truth. We expect, consequently, to hear the representatives of the West declaim indignantly, in Congress, during the present session, against the injustice that has been done by the false and inadequate statement, put forth in regard to their districts and the numbers of their constituents.

Let the reader, then, bear in mind, that in all the facts we shall present them, from the census, we refer to the year 1850-a long while ago, if we reckon by the speed with which we move, and not to the present year, when we must be considerably ahead of the conditions of that remote period.

We must, however, now that we have vented our feelings of disappointment as to the delay which has taken place in its preparation, do Mr. De Bow, or the persons concerned with him, the justice to say, that they have presented us a most valuable statistical work,-the best clearly that has yet been prepared under the auspices of the Government. It contains some twelve hundred crowded pages, every one of which has some table or calculation that supplies indispensable information to that part of the public who would know the real facts of our national condition and prospects. The original plan. as it was sent to the marshals, em

braced inquiries on the following heads: 1. The population in all its relations of wealth, age, sex, nativity, color, and employments; 2. Industry, in all its relations to produce, implements, machinery, capital vested, and persons employed; 3. Social statistics, embracing property, real and personal, colleges and schools, libraries, newspapers, paupers, criminals, religious worship; 4. Vital statistics, such as the rate and number of deaths in each locality, diseases, births, marriages, longevity, &c.; and, 5. Miscellaneous statistics relating to taxes, wages, valuations of estates, &c. It will be seen, therefore, that the inquiries covered sufficient ground; but in the returns made, there appear to have been many deficiencies. Whatever relates to population, agricultural industry, and certain social statistics, is tolerably complete; but the exhibition of our manufacturing industry was so imperfect, that Congress would not authorize it to be included in the printed syllabus, while the greater part of the vital statistics, though published, is either so carelessly or so inadequately rendered, that it is comparatively worthless. Mr. De Bow, however, promises to rectify the manufacturing returns,

in another year, and to furnish the public with the results. He has already, in his remarks on the various tables, and in the several appendices, entered upon many important and useful generalizations, and gathered from remote sources instructive illustrations and comparisons. Statistics, though perfectly correct in themselves, are often of little use for the want of these comparisons and remarks, and Mr. De Bow is therefore entitled to our special thanks for his laborious services in these respects. We should like to lay before our readers copious extracts from his deductions, but as we have a thought or two of our own to present, we must content ourselves with simply referring to the seventh, which, we presume, will be within reach of our readers almost as soon as this number of our Magazine.

In spite of the delay we have spoken of. above, of one thing we may be quite certain, viz., that the United States have not increased materially in extent, since 1850, unless the Sandwich Islands should have been annexed while this paper is going through the press. Colonel Abert, of the topographical engineers, has stated the territorial extent, in this wise:

Area of the Pacific slope of the region watered by rivers falling into the Pacific
Area of the Mississippi valley, or of the region watered by the Mississippi, Missouri, and
their tributaries

Ares of the Atlantic slope proper

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Area of the Atlantic slope, including only the waters falling into the Gulf of Mexico west of the Mississippi

183,646

Area of the Atlantic slope, including only the waters falling into the Gulf of Mexico east of the Mississippi

145,830

Total of the Atlantic slope of the regions whose waters fall into the Atlantic

967,576 2,971,158

Total area of the United States and their Territories in 1858

But an examination of the various official reports of the General Land Office, Congress, and the State Department, shows that this calculation is behind the truth, and the aggregate statement of the census is 3,220,572 square miles. The territorial extent of the republic, then, as Mr. De Bow remarks, is nearly ten times as large as that of Great Britain and France combined; three times as large as France, Great Britain, Austria, Prussia, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, Holland, and Denmark together; one and a half times as large as the Russian empire in Europe; one sixth less only than the area covered by the fifty-nine or sixty empires, states, and republics of Europe; and of equal extent with the Roman empire, or that of Alexander, neither of which is said to have exceeded 3,000,000 square miles; while it ought to gratify the propensities of the most rapacious filibuster, to know, that more than one million miles of this territory have been acquired within the last ten years, i. e., since 1840.

VOL. III.-2

Now, size is not a quality of much importance in itself, as every body knows, who has read Dr. Watts' verses which end with declaring "the mind the standard of the man," and a fortiori of nations. The little states of Greece might have been rolled up in one corner of some of our own States, yet their immortal arts illuminate the entire track of the last

two thousand years. Rome was not bigger, in her early and more vigorous days, than an average Virginia cornfield, yet Rome arrested the course of the world by her arms, and impressed her laws so deeply upon human civilization, that at this hour, at this distance of time, they are still operative in all the leading nations. The island of Great Britain may be walked over in less than a month, but Great Britain has made all other nations tributaries to her wealth, upborne by a magnificent practical energy, and adorned by a glorious literature. Size, then, is not an indispensable condition of greatness; on the other hand, it may be a

source of weakness to a nation, as it unquestionably was to the later Rome, or is now to some of the South American states.

It is, doubtless, pleasant for an American to feel that he has room to turn round in, that he possesses space enough to expatiate over, in the indefinite future, but the character of his territorial dominions which ought to excite his hopes or his pride, is not its extent,-not the fact that it reaches without a barrier from the northern snows to the tropics, and from the tempestuous Atlantic to the golden gates of the Pacific,-but the other fact that it is so peculiarly adapted by its physical features, to the residence and growth of a united people. The vast chains of the Himalayas in Asia separate its inhabitants into hostile tribes, who stagnate in their isolation-unconquerable and unconquering, alike they leave no history. The Alps or Pyrenees interposed in Europe, "make enemies of nations," or if not enemies, divided races without true community of life or a general mutual intercourse. But in this new world, the physical structure of the entire continent is different. Vast fertile plains, numberless navigable rivers, great chains of lakes extending from the ocean far into the interior, afford prodigious facilities of communication unimpeded by obstacles, and evidently designed for the seat of a homogeneous civilization. Add to these a climate not rigorous, like that of the poles, where man engages in a hopeless struggle against a niggardly nature; nor luxurious, like that of the tropics, where the energy of the body relaxes, and the very soul festers with over-ripeness, but temperate and bracing, the true golden mean, demanding and admitting a healthful activity, inciting to constant exertion, but seldom to desperate battle, and encouraging free life, but never despondency or a fatal leisure, add, we say, climate to the physical arrangement,-if you would acquire a just conception of the real grounds of our territorial eminence. Politicians may rant about the dangers of disunion, but we think that nature has wisely provided against any possible failures on that

score.

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Well, it is into this simply-organized, permeable, and ocean-washed inclosure that a motley mass from the Old World, representing every variety and degree of civilization, has been pouring for some two hundred years, and one of the most interesting studies that can be imagined, relates to the laws of its increase and interfusion, the methods of its industry, its modes of life, its systems of physical

refinement, and its means of intellectual and moral culture. It is our signal fortune that we are permitted to see the progress of human growth in its beginnings as well as in its results,-to be present at the birth of nations, to rock the cradle of their infancy, and to see them well put forward in the career of life. Every day almost we may see some little germ of a future manhood deposited in its sustaining bed, where it gathers accretions of nutriment from all sides, unfolds gradually into an organized vitality, and finally expands into full-blown strength and bloom. The older nations were begun in the faroff ages, they grew by a scarcely appreciable increase, and all their habits and life-methods having been formed for them, they are now quite unconscious of change.

The whole number of inhabitants in the United States, on the 1st of June, 1850, was 23,263,488, which may be classified in this wise. Whites, 19,630,738; freecolored, 428,661; slaves, 3,204,089. But of the free inhabitants, 17,737,505 are natives, and 2,210,828 were born abroad, viz.: 961,719 in Ireland, 573,225 in Germany, 278,675 in England, 147,700 in British America, 70,550 in Scotland, 54,069 in France, 29,868 in Wales, and 95,022 in all other countries. It is noticeable, too, in respect to the distribution of foreigners, that 1,965,518 reside in what are termed the free States, and only 245,310 in the slaveholding States. Of the entire population, 2,728,106 are in the New England States, which are six in number; 8,553,713 are in the middle States, also six in number; 3,557,872 are in the six slave States on the coast; 5,167,276 are in the six central slave States; and 2,734,945 are in the five northwestern States.

As to the ratio of increase, which is an important point between these several classes and localities, we deduce the following results. The greatest increase in our total population has been in the decade since 1840, when 6,194,035 people have been added to us, or an increase of 36-28 per cent. Of this gain, the whites were 5,434,933, showing an increase of 38.28 per cent. The free-colored have increased 42,360, or only 10.96 per cent. The slave have increased 697,733, or 28-05 per cent. In respect to foreigners, the rate of increase is not satisfactorily made out; but it appears that the proportion in which the several countries contribute to the total foreign immigration is this: Ireland, 43.04 per cent.; Germany, 25.09; England, 12.06; British America, 6.68; Scotland, 3-17; France, 2-44; Wales, 1·34;

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It may be interesting now to compare with these results the similar results obtained in Great Britain by the census of 1851. The number of people in Great Britain and the small adjacent islands, in 1851, was 20,959,477; and the men in the army, navy, and merchant service, and East India Company's service, abroad, on the passage out, or round the coasts, belonging to Great Britain, amounted, on the same day, to 162,490. The population of Great Britain may, therefore, be set down at twenty-one millions, one hundred and twenty-one thousand, nine hundred and sixty-seven (21,121,967.)

The annexed table exhibits the distribution of the people:

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10,856,977 2,328,642 2,873,758 3,688,808

of the present century, notwithstanding the great number that have annually left the country, and settled in the United States, in the colonies of North America, Australia, and South Africa. The increase in the last fifty years has been 93.47 per cent., or at the rate of 1.329 per cent. annually, the increase of each sex being about equal.

The annual rate of increase has varied in each decennial period; thus, in 184151, the population has increased, but the rate of increase has declined, chiefly from accelerated emigration.

The emigration from the United Kingdom in the ten years 1821-31 was 274,317; in the ten years 1831-41 it amounted to 717,913; and in the ten years 1841-51 it had increased to 1,693,516.

What a roving set we are! In the older countries it is not uncommon to meet with many persons who have never been beyond the town or commune in which they were born; Londoners, for instance, who never saw the green fields, except of the parks; Parisians, who never saw Versailles; rural people every where, who think the hill which bounds their little village homes the ultima thule of space; but of our 17,736,792 free inhabitants, 4,112,433 are settled in States in which they were not born. About 26 per cent. of the whole population of Virginia has migrated; South Carolina has sent forth 36 per cent.; and North Carolina, 31 per cent.; yet the New Englanders, particularly of Vermont and Connecticut, are the most discursive. They are in fact every where-at the south, the west, in the territories, on the Pacific-wherever there is space for a blade of grass to grow, or a spindle to turn, or a shop to be opened, or a railroad to be built-in short, whereever an honest penny is to be picked up, by any kind of industry or ingenuity. There are, for instance, 18,763 Massachusetts men in Ohio, 9,230 in Missouri, 55,773 in New-York, 4,760 in California,

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