The national debt of the United States being very nearly liquidated, measures began to be agitated in 1831-2, in regard to the reduction of the then existing tariff. The Secretary of the Treasury, Hon. Louis McLane, was requested to collect the statistics of the manufacturing system of the country, and report to the next Congress. From the haste in which this duty was executed, and the imperfect returns, nothing resulted but a crude mass of minute particulars, embraced in two volumes, which no one, so far as we know, has ever undertaken to digest, and which are therefore of no practical value.

About the same period two great conventions were held in the United States, the one called Tariff and the other Anti-Tariff Conventions. These instructed committees to make the necessary investigations in order to memorialize and thus influence the action of Congress. At the head of the Free Trade Committee was Albert Gallatin.

This gentleman proceeds to show that, independently of protection, the home manufacture had greatly increased in the proportion of its commodities consumed to those of foreign make. He remarks, from the imperfect data obtained in 1810, the domestic manufactures formed from 3 to of the total amount of manufactures consumed. By 1823 the domestic had increased between 121 and 136 per cent., and the amount of foreign manufactures was in 1824 from to, whilst in 1801 it was to of the whole amount consumed. This showed a considerable relative increase of the domestic.

The Tariff Committee confined their inquiries to the States of Virginia, Maryland, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware.

In these States there were 795 factories, with a capital of $40,000,000; 1,246,503 spindles, producing 10,642,000 lbs. yarn, 230,461,900 yards cloth, and consuming 77,657,316 lbs. cotton, or 214,882 bales cotton; annual value product $26,000,000. A further capital of $32,000,000 was estimated as employed in machine shops, bleacheries and print houses.

In the southern and western states thirty establishments were returned but vaguely. Indeed it was said the manufacturers every where had underrated their operations on the fear of taxation, etc.

The whole annual product of cotton manufactures in 1834, Mr. Pitkins estimates at $40,000,000, including those of families not embraced in the report above, and correcting deficiencies; and in 1831 the consumption of the raw material was about one-third of that of Great Britain, equal to that of France, and double the rest of Europe.* Previous to 1825 it is estimated we consumed often two millions pounds a year of raw cotton grown abroad, and Mr. Woodbury in his able cotton report in 1836, estimates the whole amount raw cotton consumed in the United States, in 1835, 100,000,000, of the value in goods, varying between 50 and 70 millions dollars; 45 to 50 millions being in factories. The whole import of foreign cotton

* Pitkins, 486.

goods at the same time average seven millions a year above the export of same kind of goods.

In 1840 the census returned for the whole Union gives the total number of cotton factories, 1246; number of spindles, 2,284,631; product, $46,350,443; capital invested, $51,102,359; one-third of this amount is due to Massachusetts, one-sixth to Rhode Island, one-ninth to Pennsylvania, one-twelfth to New-Hampshire. Illinois, Missouri, Arkansas, Michigan, Florida, Wisconsin, Iowa, and District Columbia, had no product.

Since that period the consumption of cotton has greatly increased in all the northern states, under the powerful stimulus of the Tariff of 1842, continued even under the less favorable one of 1846. The southern states, especially North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, have entered much more largely into manufactures. Alabama and Florida have followed, the same of Tennessee. The increase of cotton manufactures in the valley of the Ohio has been extraordinary within the past few years.

The amazing growth of Great Britain since the beginning of the century, has been the result of her manufacturing system, and especially of cotton. It was long supposed the Americans could not compete in this latter manufacture, from the high price of labor with them, and Mr. Hamilton discusses the question as early as 1790. We have seen that the manufacture had grown up in 1824, the point of the first strictly protective tariff, to a considerable stature; the low value of agricultural products and cheapness of raw material counterbalancing, no doubt, the difference in labor and interest. Our being able to sell some coarse goods in England evinces this. Nor is it to be supposed, that, in the advances of our country in population, the proportion between the value of labor in the two will be so far removed. It is but natural the United States should become a great manufacturing country, and, judging from the past and present indications, she will be enabled to supply, with her manufactured goods, every nation in the world.

Mr. Montgomery, an experienced English cotton manufacturer, having visited the United States, published, in 1840, an able work, contrasting our factories with those of Great Britain. He says:

"The amount of goods produced is much greater in America than in Great Britain, but the hours of labor are somewhat longer in the former country. The cost of buildings, machinery, &c., is a great deal higher in America, as well as the general rate of wages. The British manufacturer, upon the whole, can produce 19 per cent. cheaper; but this is more than neutralized by the lower price of cotton. In every description of goods in which the cost of the raw material exceeds that of production, the American manufacturers have a decided advantage over the British; the experience of every British manufacturer engaged in producing this description of goods, has painfully convinced him that the superior quality of the American is gradually driving him from every foreign market. Hitherto, the British have enjoyed a monopoly of fine goods, but the resources of the Americans will soon enable them to compete successfully in these. They will adopt a more economical method of getting up their works, a more improved system of management, &c., &c., which will enable them to compete successfully with the British. And, indeed, he says the manufacturers here can afford to pay higher wages than the British, because they run their

factories longer hours, drive their machinery at a higher speed, from which they produce a much greater quantity of work, at the same time they can purchase their cotton at least one penny a pound cheaper, and their water power does not cost above one-fourth of the same in Great Britain.*

"In passing through the streets of Constantinople," says Mr. Jas. Lawrence, in a letter to the late Secretary of the Treasury, "during a stay of several weeks in that city, in the year 1848, I was attracted by the cry of Americanas!' 'Americanas!' from pedlers carrying packs of cotton goods upon their backs. On examining the goods I found they were of British manufacture, which led me to inquire the cause of their being hawked about as American fabrics. My informant told me that a few years before, some American cottons found their way from Smyrna to Constantinople, and were there sold. Their superiority was so appreciated by the consumers, that since then the pedlers, in order to obtain a higher price for inferior fabrics, whether of British or foreign manufacture, are obliged to give them the American name." The same state of things, Mr. Lawrence continues, exists in the markets of Alexandria and Cairo. In Asia Minor genuine American goods are sold.

The home consumption of cotton for manufactures has increased from 149,516 bales in 1826, to 487,769 bales in 1849-50. But these are not favorable years for comparison, as the following figures will show, though we must add to them the consumption in the southern and western states to have the whole amount.

COTTON CONSUMED BY AND IN THE HANDS OF HOME MANUFACTURERS.

In the southern and western states, where the manufacture has only lately been introduced, the increase has been from 75,000 bales in 1848 to 107,500 in 1850. The whole number of mills now reported in these states is 153, working 242,830 spindles. The figures are below the facts, and we may expect in a few years to see this profitable branch of industry monopolized by them.

The present consumption of cotton in the United States, said Gen. Talmadge, at the last fair of the American Institute in New-York, is estimated at 500,000 bales per annum, which is more than the entire crop in 1824. This does not include a vast quantity, which goes up the Mississippi, Ohio, and also out from the Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, for the supply of the mills in Indiana, Ohio, Western Virginia, and Pennsylvania. There are said to be upwards of two

Montgomery, 126, 138.

hundred and fifty COTTON mills south of Mason & Dixon's line: in these points and sources of consumption, it is believed 150,000 bales are used, making a total, not less than 650,000 bales worked up, at home. The quantity of cotton goods made in the United States is estimated at 720,000,000 of yards, of which about 80,000,000 are exported, leaving 640,000,000 for home consumption."

We conclude with a few remarks from the address of Dr. Antisell, at the same fair, regretting that we have been unable to examine the other manufactures of the country with the same minuteness as cotton, and referring the reader to our published volumes for a vast variety of information upon the subject of cotton and its manufacture in the south, the Union, or abroad.

The vastness of the cotton trade, and the suddenness of its growth, naturally astonishes us. It is the agricultural wealth of the southern states. It would be well to recollect that it is England's manufacturing wealth. We export nearly five-sixths of all we grow, in exact numbers, in the year 1848 :

The total cotton crop was..
The export of 1849, as above....

which with a small stock on hand, left
home consumption.

England is the chief buyer of the raw cotton, and the chief manufacturer of cotton prints, and this country is at present dependent on that island for the chief supply of cotton piece goods. The British export of cotton goods of all kinds, in the six months ending June, 1849, was 596,370,322 yards, of which the greater quantity came to this country.

There is, however, some comfort exhibited by the returns of the last twenty years from these it appears that the imports now of plain calicoes are one-half what they were in 1830, and in printed calicoes between one-half and one-third ; so that our cotton manufactures are gradually increasing, and at the present time represent one-fifth the value of all manufactured goods.

The exports of cotton manufacture are small, not having increased of late years, standing nearly at the same figure as in 1829; so that our increased supply has been for home consumption, an increasing population demanding it.

ART. II.-LITTLE RED-HEAD.-A TALE OF TEXAS BORDER LIFE.

The following sketch is from the pen of a gentleman who has acquired a large reputation for many thrilling stories of border life, and its thousand perilous adventures. By birth a Kentuckian, he repaired at an early age to Texas, and took part in many of the exciting dramas enacted there. It is our intention to diversify the character of the Review, by introducing an occasional paper of the sort, under our literary head, whenever any are offered possessing sufficient interest and attraction. We shall thus enliven the pages which have hitherto been too exclusively confined to the dry details of facts and statistics.-[ED.

CHAPTER I.

THE time of Secret Societies is not yet passed-at all events, we believe that many of them still continue to exert a wide and powerful influence, little realized in our common-place world. It is too

much the outward manner of the times to sneer at the power of confederacies, though they are feared-nay, dreaded-with a peculiar sort of vehemence, and, frequently, even with superstition.

We mean to assert nothing disrespectful of such institutions in general, and of their results in particular-for we do believe that, in spite of the Inquisition, they have been the most important agents and means of progress. The deepest truths must come out of the heart of the world, whence they are worked up by the pale and begrimed miners of thought, towards the surface, until the ruddy children of the sun can grasp them, and they become, in their robust hands, REALITIES!

So with the principle of these Societies generally. The object to be attained is most usually a romantic one, and, of course, not strictly orthodox-therefore, secrecy may be required to prevent controversy. In a word, we do not undertake to defend such organizations, but simply to assert their existence in much greater numbers and power than men are generally disposed to believe; and, whether for evil or for good, their tremendous influence upon the times.

Most of the pretended revelations with regard to them have been proven to be false, and, of course, from the very principle of theory we can only really know of them by their effects. It is only from such a point of view that we would presume to speak. Such Societies have existed, and do exist among us, and, as elsewhere, have exerted, and do exert a most extended influence. The distance and division between north and south has been more felt than expressed through such organizations than otherwise—therefore, it is with effects that we propose to deal in this narrative, rather than causes, which we must beg leave to be inferred!

Years ago, before Texas was known as more than a wild province of Mexico, there existed an extensive and powerful association within the limits of our own territory, the operations of which were extended to a greater distance than was dreamed of by many of the most powerful and shrewd men of the day. It is unnecessary to particularize farther upon the motives and methods of such an institution, than to say that it was founded in a grasping, stern, but deep intelligence, and had for its objects what, at that time, would have been considered the most vague and wildly impossible schemes of territorial acquisition, which, having been suggested by the most bold and unprincipled man our country has produced, has been perpetuated by some of its most able, since, to a dazzling consummation. We cannot reveal more than glimpses of the methods pursued, and that rather by implication than by explanation.

It suffices to say, that young men were in some demand by thembut that they were young men of peculiar character. Agents, everywhere in the principal cities, such as New-York and New-Orleans particularly, kept their treacherous eyes secretly upon the movements of such young men as made themselves conspicuous for spirit, and were known to be of good families and education. The more dissolute the better, so they were truly courageous. There