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ARTICLE III.

(From the American Railway Times.)

The Iron Interests of the United States.

We have referred to, and sincerely deprecated the attempt that is now being made in Congress to repeal the duty on foreign made iron. We think such a movement is unwise and perilous to one of the greatest, is not the greatest of American interests. Upon the first blush it would seem as if our opposition to the project, was not made with due reference to the railway wants of the country, and especially with regard to the thousand new and gigantic railway enterprises of the West and South. It is not so. We should like to see every one of these enterprises placed upon a substantial footing, so firm that nothing could prevent their rapid and immediate completion. We have none of that fear that is so loudly expressed by many in certain quarters, that we have too many railway facilities. We believe the general common sense of the country, the question of profit and loss as a commercial enterprise, will prevent this trouble, if the speculative fever of the more rash is not stimulated and fed by undue Legislative action. The majority of the persons who are now besieging Congress for land grants for railway purposes, care nothing for the good of the country or the local accommodation they prate about so glibly; they are only anxious to fill their own capacious pockets. The projects they are representing are many of them good, and if carried forward to completion, would be a benefit to the country; while others are valueless and not wanted. Allowing that the valuable part of these projects are wanted, would it be judicious, to drive them forward at the present time, if by so doing they prejudice and destroy other interests of the most important national consideration? Let us be guided by a little common sense. A man in trade may think it a very fine thing to build a house costing some fifteen or twenty thousand dollars. But there are two things he will consider if he is wise, before he goes forward with his building projects. In the first place does he actually need it, and secondly, can he afford it? A negative answer to either branch of this proposition will prevent the expenditure. There are some things that man needs that he cannot afford to buy, and there are many things he can afford to buy that he does not need. Prudence then will dictate, that what he cannot afford to buy, he will let alone.

If, however, forgetting the dictates of prudence, he does buy what he cannot afford, the loss will fall upon others, and so those with whom he is trading will have to suffer for his want of prudence. His creditors, perhaps, are men of small means like himself, and by his bankruptcy are involved in distress and poverty. This seems a hard case, but the community in which the man lived would think it still a harder case, if, by some sudden Legislative

enactment, this man should be endowed with a power to buy his goods and provisions at half the whole sum they were compelled to pay for the same things. And it still would seem a hard case too, if by that same enactment he should be empowered to buy his goods so cheap that it would break up the entire business of his neighbors, who had for years been striving to build up a paying business upon small means. Do not some of our railway projects and their backers, taken in connection with the iron manufacturers of the United States, stand somewhat in the above relation? Let us look at a few facts. In this country we use iron material in almost everything. In fact we can find no business or occupation with which it does not enter largely, and its use is every day increasing. In this country, likewise, we have iron ores and coal in such abundance, that if the mines were properly worked, we could supply the world for centuries, and still have an overplus in the crude state beyond human calculation. The country is yet young, and from the high price of labor and the want of experience, we have been unable to work our mining riches with such facility as to compete with our trans-atlantic neighbors who have greater means and experience. The consequence has been that we have been compelled to pay the foreign manufacturers a profit upon his labor and capital, and still pay a heavy amount for transportation. Once in a great while we have so adjusted the tariff that some efforts to manufacture our own iron would be crowned with partial success, when straightway down goes the tariff and in pours foreign iron in such quantities and at such prices, that our manufacturers were compelled to stop their works and go into some other business. This game of battle-door and shuttle-cock with the iron manufacturing interests of the United States, has been played for many years, and the foreign manufacturer so well understands his game, that it always ends to his advantage and to the disadvantage of this country. The price of iron guaged by our necessities, is regulated by a league of foreign manufacturers, and they are de. termined to have a monopoly of our market-to them the richess in the world. Let them understand that it is necessary to sell us at no profit for three or five years to retain our market and prevent our own manufacturing progress, and they will do it. They have the combined wealth and power to compel others to follow their lead. If the duty on foreign iron should be repealed in the United States, the price in England would immediately advance to such a point as would pay the highest profit to the foreign manufacturer, and still prevent our forges and furnaces from going into opera

tion.

The present tariff, aided by a most extraordinary consumption of iron in this country, has allowed of some increase of our own manufactures. We have begun in some little degree to get our works going again. Some of these are doing a paying business, and should the present demand continue, and the tariff remain un

disturbed, in a few years we should increase very considerably our home product, and so far make some progress in achieving a partial independence of the dictation of the foreign manufacturer. We could not do this with the present tariff, were we not aided by other circumstances of moment. It is well known that very large numbers of English iron workers have gone to the gold fields of Australia, and that consequently labor there is higher, and may continue so to be for some years. It would be wise for us at this juncture to take advantage of circumstances. Our national interest is pre-eminently the iron manufacture.-Every State in the Union is interested in it. Let the country remember the history of the cotton manufacturers in this country, and apply it to our iron interests. We now manufacture cotton cloth of almost every grade, and compete with those of England, even in her own markets. If we are wise, we shall foster our iron manufacturers to just such an end.

ARTICLE IV.

From Livingston's Law Reporter.

Newspapers and Public Libraries.

The origin of newspapers, like that of many institutions important to modern civilization, is to be referred to Italy The war which the Republic of Venice waged against Solyman II., in Dalmatia, gave rise, in 1563, to the custom in Venice of communicating the military and commercial information received, by written sheets (notizie scritte) to be read at a particular place by those desirous to learn the news, who paid for this privilege in a coin, not any longer in use, called gazetta -a name which, by degrees, was transferred to the newspaper itself in Italy and France, and passed over into England.* A file of these Venetian papers, for sixty years, is still preserved in the Magliabecchi Library at Florence. The first regular paper was a monthly, written, government paper at Venice; and Chalmers, in his life of Ruddiman, informs us that "a jealous government did not allow a printed newspaper; and the Venetian Gazetta continued long after the invention of printing, to the close of the sixteenth century, and even to our own days, to be distributed in manuscript." Those who first wrote newspapers were called, by the Italians, menanti, be

Some etymologists have thought the name gazetta is to be derived from gaz zera, a magpie, or, in this case, a chatterer; others from the Latin gaza, which, being colloquially lengthened into gazetta, would signify a little treasury of news. The Spanish derive it, indeed, from the Latin gaza. [Ġreek, gaza] though their newspapers, least of all, deserve the name of treasure. They have a peculiar word, wanting in our idiom, gazetista, a lover of the gazette. The German zeitung is from the ancient theidinge or theidung [the English, tiding, the Swedish, tidingar.]

cause, says Vossius, they intended commonly, by these loose papers, to spread about defamatory reflections, and were therefore prohibited in Italy, by Gregory XIII., in a particular bull, under the name of Menantes (from the Latin minantes, threatening). Menage derives the name, with more probability, from the Italian menare, which signifies "to lead at large," or, "spread afar." Perhaps it will not be irrelevant, however, for the writer to remark, that it is common for the Mecklenburg peasantry, as he knows from experience, to call the newspaper de Logenblad (the lying paper); and the German proverb in use to this day, "He lies like print," (er luegt wie gedruckt,) is probably connected with this view of early newspapers.

The first English genuine newspaper appeared under Elizabeth, in the epoch of the Spanish Arma la, of which several, printed when the Spanish fleet was in the English Channel, during the year 1588, are preserved in the British Museum; and it is very curious how much the mode of communicating cer ain kinds of intelligence in these early papers resemble the forms in use at present. The earliest newspaper is entitled "The English Mercurie." which, by authority, "was imprinted at London, by her i hness's printer, 158." These were, however, but extraordiuary gazettes, not regularly published. Periodical papers seem first to have been more generally used by the English during the civil wars of the time of the Commonwealth, to disseminate sentiments of loyalty or resistance. They were called weekly news-books. Though Mercury was the prevailing title of most, the quaintness which marks the titles of books in that age, is found also in the names of the "news-books;" for instance, the Secret Owl, Heraclitus Ridens, the Weekly Discoverer, and the Discoverer Stript Naked, &c. A catalogue of the Mercuries would exhibit a curious picture of those singular times.

We learn from Buckingham's specimens of newspaper literature, that the earliest newspaper established in North America was the Boston News-Letter, the first number of which was issued April 24, 1704.

A comparison of the number of periodicals and inhabitants of different countries, gives the following results:

In 1827, there appeared in Great Britain, 483 different newspapers and other periodicals to 23.400.000 inhabitants; in Sweden and Norway, 82 journals to 3,866,000 inhabitants; in the States of the Church, 6 newspapers to 2,598,000 inhabitants; (Stockholm, with 78,000 inhabitants, has 30 journals; Rome, with 154,000, only 3); Denmark, to 1,950,000 inhabitants, has 80 journals, of which 71 are in the Danish language; 23 are devoted to politics; 25 to the sciences. Prussia has 12,416,000 inhabitants, and 288 journals and periodicals. (Berlin has 221,000 inhabitants, and 53 periodic 1 works; Copenhagen has 109,000 inhabitants, and 57 journals) The Netherlands have 6,143,000 inhabitants, and 150 journals. In the German Confederation, (excluding Austria and Prussia,) there are 13.300,000 inhabitants, and 305 journals; in Saxony, to 1,400,000 inhabitants, 54 newspapers; in Hanover, to 1,550,000 inhabitants, 16 newspapers; in Bavaria, to 3,960,000 inhabitants, 48 newspapers. France, with a population of 32,000,000, has 490 periodical works, (660 printing establishments, 1,500 presses ;) in Paris, 81 printing establishments, or 850 presses.

In Paris alone, containing 890,000 inhabitants, there are 176 periodical works.

The following table, arranged for the American Almanac of 1830, is corrected from the Traveller, and contains a statement of the number of newspapers published in the colonies at the commencement of the Revolution, and also the number of newspapers and other periodical works in the United States in 1810 and 1828:

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The following is the state of the newspaper press in the U. S. in 1810, as extracted from a number of the National Intelligencer: New Hampshire, 12 papers, 624,000 circulation; Massachusetts, 32 papers, 2,873,000 circulation; Rhode Island, 7 papers, 331,800 circulation; Connecticut, 11 papers, 657,800 circulation; Vermont, 14 papers, 682,400 circulation; New York, 66 papers; 4,139,200 circulation; New Jersey, 8 papers, 332,800 circulation; Pennsylvania, 71 papers, 4.542,200 circulation; Delaware, 2 papers, 166,400 circulation; Maryland, 21 papers, 1,903,200 circulation; District of Columbia, 6 papers, 686,400 circulation; Virginia, 23 papers, 1,289,600 circulation; North Carolina, 10 papers, 416,000 circulation; South Carolina, 10 papers, 842,400 circulation; Georgia, 13 papers, 707,200 circulation; Kentucky, 17 papers, 618,800 circulation; Tennessee,6 papers, 171,600 circulation; Ohio, 14 papers, 473,200 circulation; Indiana Territory, 1 paper, 15,600 circulation; Mississippi Territory, 4 papers, 83,200 circulation; Orleans Territory, 10 papers, 748,800 circulation; Louisiana Territory, 1 paper, 15,100 circulation. Total for the U. S., 358 papers; circulation, 22,222,200.

The North American colonies, in the year 1720, had only seven newspapers; in 1810, the United States had 358; in 1825, they had 640; in 1830, 1,000, with a population of 13,000,000.

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