19 crease of property over the valuation of 1850 of 130 per cent., while the increase of population in the same decade was but 35.59 per cent. In seeking for the cause of this discrepancy, we shall reach a fundamental and all important fact which will furnish the key to the past and to the future progress of the United States. It is the power they possess, by means of canals and railways, to practically abolish the distance between the sea-board and the wide-spread and fertile regions of the interior, thereby removing the clog on their agricultural industry, and virtually placing them side by side with the communities on the Atlantic. During the decade ending in 1860, the sum of $413,541,510 was expended within the limits of the interior central group known as the “food-exporting States,” in constructing 11,212 miles of railway, to connect them with the seaboard. The traffic receipts from those roads were: In 1860 .......... $31,335,031 “ 1861 .................................................... 35,305,509 “ 1862 .................................................... 44,908,405 The saving to the communities themselves in the transportation, for which they thus paid $44,908,405, was at least five times that amount, while the increase in the exports from that portion of the Union, greatly animated not only the commerce of the Atlantic States carrying those exports over their railways to the sea-board, but the manufacturing industry of the Eastern States, that exchange the fabrics of their work-shops for the food of the interior. By carefully analyzing the $8,048,825,840, in question, we find that the six manufacturing States of New England received $735,754,244 of the amount: that the middle Atlantic or carrying and commercial States, from New York to Maryland inclusive, received $1,834,911,579; and that the food-producing interior itself, embracing the eight great States of Ohio, Indi
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTM4ODY=