of cheap provision, of coal, and of iron; and besides these advantages, the products of the north and of the south can be more conveniently and cheaply distributed from the centre, than from a point near either extreme. Here, likewise, the works of art can be more conveniently distributed, and here a greater number and variety of artists will establish themselves. But in a country so extensive, and abounding with so many resources, many important commercial and manufacturing cities must necessarily grow up in every important division; yet all connected with, and forming part of one great system.

Notwithstanding we have endeavored to show that the prevailing current of commerce naturally proceeds on a line drawn from the equator, in the direction of the poles; yet we are not to conclude that all commerce must cease between the east and the west. Should this be the case, there would remain but little inducement to social intercourse between the inhabitants of the several continents; and hence one of the great agents of civilization and of the propagation of the christian religion, would be wanting. Such a result, however, has been provided against by the economy of Nature. Owing to the variety of temperature in the same degrees of latitude; to the irregular distribution of mineral substances, and to the genius and peculiar adaptation of the people of different countries to particular employments, there will ever remain a sufficient variety of useful commodities to keep up an active commercial intercourse between the people of every country. This branch of commerce, however, includes little that is necessary to human subsistence, or indeed to the more common comforts. But consists principally of the more curious and costly works of art, designed to gratify the taste and to ornament the person; or of the more rare and delicate products of the vegetable kingdom. And these commodities being of great value, in proportion to their bulk and weight, bear transportation to a great distance, and do not demand those extraordinary facilities of transportation which are required for the great mass of necessary commodities. Such is the nature of Asiatic commerce. And if the predictions of an eminent statesman of the present day should be verified, this commerce is destined, in time, to come from the west, instead of from the east, as at present. This would constitute another era in commercial history. But whether it shall come from the west, or from the south, the great emporium of Asiatic commerce for this continent, is doubtless destined to be established in the Valley of the Mississippi, as the point from which it can be most conveniently distributed to the greatest number of consumers.

We have drawn the outlines of a system of commerce naturally growing out of the relative position and physical geography of the Valley of the Mississippi. To such as see no design in the economy of Nature, it may be considered a fancy sketch; but we have a higher object in view than the projection of fanciful theories for amusement.

Believing that a correct knowledge of the laws of Nature and obedience to their direction, constitute the highest degree of human wisdom, we have aimed, in the

present article, to call the attention of our readers to the elementary principles of commerce. It would be as reasonable to expect that one who daily violates the laws of his physical nature could enjoy health and comfort throughout a long life, as that any people could prosper for an indefinite length of time, without observing the natural laws of exchange, which are applicable to the physical geography and natural resources of the country which they inhabit. In a great interior region, like the Valley of the Mississippi, the means of subsistence are derived from agriculture almost exclusively-commerce and the mechanic arts being its agents. The farmer may toil with assiduity-he may be profoundly learned in geology, chemistry and botany, and skilful in the application of these sciences to the culture of plants-he may be temperate in his living, and frugal in all that relates to his own affairs-yet, if these, his agents, should conduct his exchanges in a manner calculated to consume or waste one-half the products of his labor, he could not prosper. Therefore, a knowledge of the true nature of commerce is of the highest importance to the agriculturist, and of all classes of the community, he is most interested in giving it a wise direction,

ART. II.-LABOR AND SKILL.

THE first, and, as is supposed, the strongest objection made to the present commencement of manufactories in the west, is the scarcity and high prices of labor. In view of the millions of acres we have untilled, labor is indeed scarce - but in view of the price obtained for our agricultural surplus products, labor is abun dant.

The money price of mechanical labor is now actually less in the settled and healthy sections of the west than in New England; the average of wages in all employments and positions is certainly not more than ten per cent. higher. The day laborer in Boston gets one dollar-here, seventy-five cents;-farm hands here, eight dollars to sixteen dollars per month: there fifteen dollars to twenty-five dollars. But this money, thus paid, is the measure of two values — first, of wages; and second, of what it purchases for the laborer. In this view, labor is cheaper here than in any country where the bread fruit and plantain do not grow. He who labors for pay, looks at the result of receipts and expenditures of the year, or of life. He can live here equally well at one-third less than in New England and at one-half of what he could in England. He can therefore work here from thirty-three to fifty per cent. less than in the two great manufacturing countries of the world. If we give the same wages, the laborer can lay up from thirty-three to fifty per cent. more here than in those countries; and if he buys land with his earnings, he gets ten, or fifty, or one hundred times as many acres here as he could get there..

All this, says the objector, is very plain ; but we have not enough artisans here for the new employment, and if you call them from abroad will they come ? The answer is in the fact that whenever and wherever we have furnished profitable and certain employment in the west, the call for labor has been promptly supplied. The operatives in cotton mills have not come, because we have built no mills for them-capital has not come from New England for investment in cotton mills, because it has yielded so large an investment at home; and it has not come from England, because of the distance and the absence of direct communication between the two points and the ignorance on the part of the English manu. facturer of our advantages.

We are to look first for superintendents and overseers among our best men. As we can afford to pay very high prices, it is not doubted that the men can be had, and we cannot admit that the Anglo-Saxon here has not as much enterprise and intellect as in the east or in England. The salary of a superintendent of a Lowell corporation ranges from $2,000 to $6,000 per annum, and this commands the highest grade of talent in New England. It takes the lawyer from his practice and the judge from the bench. The average salaries of the Governors of the New England States is $1.208 per annum, and of Judges of the Supreme Courts is $1,415 per annum. $2,000 here is equal to $3,000 there. Will not this price command the same talent here? if not, we have the surplus fund of savings in transportation so to increase the amount until we can draw the Lowell superintendent from the Lowell mill.

For ordinary operatives we have three sources of supply:

First-domestic. In the opinion of some fifty manufacturers of whom I have sought information, there will not be the slightest difficulty in obtaining male operatives at home and at as low a rate of wages as that paid in New England, and as little difficulty in obtaining females, if the proper system is adopted. One of the oldest and most successful manufacturers in the interior of Kentucky, says that he has no difficulty in obtaining any number desired for his cotton mill and could increase this number to a great extent. At Cincinnati the supply is greater than the demand, and, at the largest cotton mill there, applications for employment are only received on Monday morning. In Louisville, our clothing merchants, printers, book-binders, paper makers, &c., hire as cheaply as in Boston; and those who have the best means of forming an opinion on the subject, and without an exception, say that the supply of such labor will be greater than the demand.

It may be necessary to state to those who have never seen or read the details of a cotton mill, that it does not require as long an apprenticeship at the spindle or power loom as in most employments; from thirty to sixty days is long enough to give both theory and practice. The average period of residence of the female operatives at the New England manufacturing towns, is only about four years; yet there is more and better work actually done in the same time by these operatives, than is obtained from any operatives in the same employment in the world.

The next source of supply is from the east, and particularly from New England.

Last year Gen. James built in Pittsburg the most complete cotton mill, as is said, in the United States. He furnished not only the machinery, but all the leading operatives from New England. The mill and the operatives are said to work to admiration. This season, as I was recently informed, a large cotton-yarn mill near Cincinnati is to be filled with looms, and the operatives have been engaged at Petersburg, Va.

Although in New England, and perhaps in the manufacturing district of Virginia, such labor is in great demand, and sometimes so difficult to be supplied that emigrants are sought for; yet there is not the slightest difficulty in bringing it here..

Twenty years ago I came from the centre of the cotton manufacturing district of New England, and since have had every means of knowing the feelings of every class of persons there engaged in manufacturing, and I say with knowledge and with confidence, that, were I to go there now and advertise in the newspapers, or even put placards on the guide posts at the road crossings, that I was author. ized by responsible corporations, who had made and would conduct cotton mills on the Lowell system, to contract for the immediate employment of male and fe male operatives for those mills, and at the same wages paid at Lowell, and that the place of employment was at an healthy position on the free bank of La Belle Riviere, for every hundred desired there would be a thousand applications.

The father would come because he could exchange his few paternal acres for broad fields in the west; the son would come to a country offering greater free. dom of action and a wider scope to his ambitious plans; and the daughter would come from the novelty of change, and because, of the female sex in New Eng. land-the supply is greater than the demand.

Is it supposed that New England has sent abroad all her sons and daughters that she can spare, or that have the energy to leave a barren soil and rigorous climate? Offer to her manufacturing class certain and profitable employment and in favorable positions, and the grass would soon grow in her manufacturing towns; and this labor could be had immediately, for the east has, with the most commendable liberality, made easy and cheap the facilities of emigration to us.

The next source of supply is from Europe, and particularly from the manufacturing districts of England. To show that I do not merely rely on conjecture and general reasoning, and at the risk of being tedious, I bring the facts from the best English authority known.

In 1840, a select committee, of which Mr. Hume was chairman, was raised in the House of Commons, to take into consideration the general condition of the manufacturing interests of Great Britain and the policy of modifying its system of import duties. A mass of testimony was given to this committee by the offcers of the most important boards of trade, and chambers of commerce, and by

the leading manufacturers. Although neither the committee nor the witnesses stated, in direct terms, that the manufacturing prosperity of England was on the wane, and that she could not, besides paying the cost of transportation, compete with the cheap food and natural advantages of many other countries, (the United States for instance,) which had been her best customers, it is quite apparent that such were their impressions, and that they were only deterred from stating the truth boldly by the fear of giving encouragement to competition abroad. Let the reader judge from the following extracts:

"Your committee gather from the evidence that has been laid before them, that while the prosperity of our own manufactures is not to be traced to benefits derived from the exclusion of foreign rival manufactures, so neither is the competition of continental manufactures to be traced to a protective system. They are told that the most vigorous and successful of the manufactures on the continent have grown, not out of peculiar favor shown to them by legislation, but from those natural and spontaneous advantages which are associated with labor and capital in certain localities, and which cannot be transferred elsewhere at the mandate of the legislature, or at the will of the manufacturer. Your committee see reason to believe, that the most prosperous fabrics are those which flourish without the aid of special favors.

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That is, when these fabrics are made where the "natural and spontaneous advantages" exist; where, (as in this valley,) God has given all the "special faVors " that the manufacturer needs.

With reference to the influence of the protective system upon wages, and on the condition of the laborer, your committee have to observe that, as the pressure of foreign competition is heaviest on those articles in the production of which the rate of wages is lowest, so it is obvious, in a country exporting as much as England does, that other advantages may more than compensate for an apparent advantage in the money price of labor. The countries in which the rate of wages is lowest, are not always those which manufacture most successfully."

For illustration: When cotton is at eight cents per pound, in New Orleans, the difference between its cost to the Louisville and the Manchester manufacturer, for a mill of 10,000 spindles, would be about $25,960 per annum.

At our rate of

wages, about $25,600 would be paid yearly for labor in the mill. We, therefore, can pay the laborer double price, and be on an equality, if we had no other advantage.

Impost duties were higher in England than in France, yet the Spitalfields weaver had to yield to the weaver of Lyons, because food was cheaper at Lyons than at Spitalfields.

Egypt grows cotton, and the Pacha of Egypt undertook to manufacture it largely; he selected the best cotton and paid his own price for it; he imported the best machinery and the most skilful managers; he gathered the strongest and most active of his Fellahs and Arabs, and brought down slaves from Dongola and