another.

That, after such a course of repression, the country found itself
wholly unprepared on the attainment of independence to make any
headway in this field, is no matter of surprise. Thirty years elapsed
before the manufacturing statistics of the Union became presentable.
In 1810 they were reckoned at $198,613,471. This embraces every fruit
of handicraft, from a barrel of flour and a bushel of lime to a silk
dress. We had 122,647 spindles and 325,392 looms, made 53,908 tons of
pig iron, and refined about one pound of sugar for each head of the
population. In 1870, after sixty years of tossing between the
Scylla and Charybdis of tariffs, "black" and white, the yield of our
factories had mounted to the respectable sum of $4,232,325,442. They
employed 2,053,996 operatives. Of these, the average wages were $377,
against $289 in 1860 and $247 in 1850, yearly. The advance in the
product of refined sugar may be cited as illustrative of the progress
of the people in comfort and luxury. It reached a value of one hundred
and nine millions, representing nearly ten times as many pounds, or
twenty-eight pounds a head. This exemplification is but one in an
endless list.

Manufactures have come to figure respectably in our exports. They
exceed in that list, by three or four to one, the entire exports of
all kinds in 1790; and they equal the average aggregate of the years
from 1815 to 1824. But the multiplication of the wants of a people
rapidly growing in numbers and refinement will, with the comparatively
high price of labor, scarcity of capital and distance of most of our
ports from the markets supplied by European manufactures, for a long
time to come make the home-supply the chief care of our artisans. They
have, for such and other reasons, in some points lost ground of