RAILROAD STOCKS IN BOSTON MARKET. PREPARED BY JOSEPH G. MARTIN, ESQ., COMMISSION STOCK BROKER. Highest & lowest. Shar's s'ld Dividends Railroads. payable. 1856. Jan. 2, Jan. 2, Divid's. 1857. 1836. Boston and Maine. Bost. & N. Y. Cent'l. Boston & Provid... 7643 3 64 66 0 21 Bost. & Worcester. 85 The following are some of the main particulars of the enormous iron steamship now in course of construction on the Thames :-Her whole length is 684 feet; breadth of beam, 86 feet; diameter of paddle-wheels, 121 feet; depth of hold, 70 feet; depth of paddle-wheel, 58 feet; diameter of screw, 41 feet. There will be five funnels and seven masts, two of the latter being square rigged. The nominal horse-power will be 2,600, but it will work up from 6,000 to 10,000. Her measurement will be 23,640 tons. It is expected that her crew will number from 750 to 800 men, including twelve chief officers. She will have accommodations for 20,000 persons, including 4,000 first-class passengers; or, if used as a transport, she can carry 15,000 troops and 5,000 horses. She is expected to run at the rate of sixteen miles an hour. Surely this is one of the wonders of mechanic power in the nineteenth century. Erie, Illinois Central, New York Central, and Reading, are from New York quotations, being seldom quoted in this market. + Northern dividend $2, declared June, 1854, but not paid until June, 1856. Reading 4 per cent extra in stock, July, 1856. JOURNAL OF MINING AND MANUFACTURES. MANUFACTURES IN THE UNITED SATES. In another department of the present number of the Merchants' Magazine, the reader will find a brief sketch of our agricultural greatness and growth, derived from a late number of the Home Missionary. But a great country cannot be densely peopled with an exclusively farming population; and a nation that is des tined to be a "power in the earth," must do something besides plant and reap. Manufactures are necessary to the full development of even the resources of agriculture; and the fields will not yield their most abundant harvests, except at the solicitation of those who do not labor on them. Man does not live by bread alone; but wool, and cotton, and iron, and glass, and stone, and gold, and silver, all minister to his manifold growth. What, then, are our prospects as a manufacturing people? They are unsurpassed. The exigencies of a new country have hitherto prevented, indeed, that concentration upon the arts which coming years will unquestionably witness, and yet great progress has already been made. In most of the useful arts we hold a high position, and our inventions bear away the palm from the most skilful nations in Europe. The value of our manufactures is not small. In 1850 the capital invested in this department of production was over $527,000,000; the raw material and fuel amounted to more than $554,000,000; nearly $230,000,000 were paid as wages; and the total product was estimated at $1,013,336,463, giving a profit on the entire investment of 43 per cent. Of this total the free States furnished $845,430,428, and the slave $167,909,035. In all departments of manufacture, in textile fabrics, in machinery, in cutlery, in glass, in cabinet and carriage work, in books, maps, charts, scientific and optical instruments, the progress already made has placed this nation in the very front rank, and in an attitude that is a presage of honorable triumphs. In Brussels and Wilton carpets our manufacturers challenge the world; and England has but recently supplied herself, at a considerable expense, with the patent right to an American loom. The genius of the American people takes special delight in whatsoever taxes their invention; and so sure as their social and political fabric shall stand, so surely will they avail themselves of the vast resources of material furnished by their fields and mines, to build up a system of manufactures of continental magnificence. THE GROWTH OF MACHINERY, RALPH WALDO EMERSON has, in his "English Traits," published in 1856 by Sampson, Phillips & Co., of Boston, a curious and striking chapter on the growth. of machinery in England. The facts have before been given in other forms in the pages of the Merchants' Magazine, but never in a more readable or suggestive dress: It is a curious chapter in modern history, the growth of the machine shop. Six hundred years ago, Roger Bacon explained the precession of the equinoxes, the consequent necessity of the reform of the calendar, measured the length of the year, invented gunpowder, and announced, (as if looking from his lofty cell over five centuries into ours,) "that machines can be constructed to drive ships more rapidly than a whole galley of rowers could do, nor would they need anything but a pilot to steer them. Carriages also might be constructed to move at an incredible speed, without the aid of any animal. Finally, it would not be impossible to make machines, which, by means of a suit of wings, should fly in the air in the manner of birds." But the secret slept with Bacon. The six hundred years have not yet fulfilled his words. Two centuries ago the sawing of timber was done by hand; the carriage-wheels ran on wooden axels; the land was tilled by wooden plows; and it was to little purpose that they had pit-coal, or that looms were improved, unless Watt and Stephenson had taught them to work forcepumps and power-looms by steam. The great strides were all taken within the last two hundred years. The "Life of Sir Robert Peel," who died the other day, the model Englishman, very properly has for a frontispiece a drawing of the spinning-jenny, which wove the web of his fortunes. Hargreaves invented the spinning-jenny, and died in a workhouse. Arkwright improved the invention, and the machine dispensed with the work of ninety-nine men—that is, one spinner could do as much work as a hundred had done before. The loom was improved further. But the men would sometimes strike for wages, and combine against the masters, and about 1829-'30, much fear was felt lest the trade would be drawn away by these interruptions, and the emigration of the spinners to Belgium and the United States. Iron and steel are very obedient, whether it were not possible to make a spinner that would not rebel, nor mutter, nor scowl, nor strike for wages, nor emigrate. At the solicitation of the masters, after a mob and riot at Staleybridge, Mr. Roberts, of Manchester, undertook to create this peaceable fellow, instead of the quarrelsome fellow God had made. After a few trials he succeeded, and in a creation, the delight of millowners, and destined, they said, "to restore order among the industrious classes," a machine requiring only a child's hand to piece the broken yarns. As Arkwright had destroyed domestic spinning, so Roberts destroyed the factory spinner. The power of machinery in Great Britain in mills has been computed to be equal to 600,000,000 men; one man being able, by the aid of steam, to do the work which required two hundred and fifty men to accomplish fifty years ago. The production has been commensurate. England already had this laborious race, rich soil, water, wood, coal, iron, and a favorable climate. Eight hundred years ago, commerce had made it rich, and it was recorded, “England is the richest of all the northern nations." The Norman historians recite that "in 1067, William carried with him into Normandy, from England, more gold and silver than had ever before been seen in Gaul." But when to this labor and trade, and these native resources, was added this goblin of steam, with his myriad arms, never tired, working night and day, everlastingly, the amassing of property has run out of all figures. It makes the motor of the last ninety years. The steam-pipe has added to her population and wealth the equivalent of four or five Englands. Forty thousand ships are entered in Lloyd's lists. The yield of wheat has gone on from 2,000,000 quarters, at the time of the Stuarts, to 13.000,000 in 1854. A thousand millions of pounds sterling are said to compose the floating money of commerce. In 1848, Lord John Russel stated that "the people of this country have laid out three hundred millions of pounds capital in railways, in the last four years." Mr. Emerson has made a mistake respecting the inventions of Hargreaves and Arkwright—the former is the inventor of the mule-frame, the latter that of the throstle-frame-two different machines. Both spin cotton, to be sure, but they are entirely distinct, and both are used in different factories. Roberts, of Manchester, is not the inventor of the self-acting mule-frame, but Messrs. Eaton, of that city; but their first machines were very complex, and were not very suc cessful. Roberts, in 1830 improved upon them, making them more simple, and really successful, for which he deserves great credit. The self-acting mule, how ever, has not destroyed the labor of the hand-spinner. There are more handmules still in operation than the self-acting kind-all fine numbers of cotton are still spun on the hand-mule. MANUFACTURE OF WHISKY IN OHIO. An article is going the rounds of the press, copied from the Cincinnati Gazelle, concerning certain statistics respecting the manufacture of whisky in the vicinity of Cincinnati, which will surprise many readers. Cincinnati, it is claimed, is the greatest whisky market in the world, and the Valley of the Ohio the greatest whisky-producing region on the face of the earth. The writer of the article says that in no branch of business have inventive genius and modern improvements been so largely drawn upon as in the distillation of liquors. Steam is made to perform almost all the labor necessary for the production of whisky. Selecting one distillery among many for description, the writer says: A railroad connects the distillery with the Miami Canal, whence the supplies of corn are obtained. The latter is transferred from canal-boats into large boxes set upon cars, and thus conveyed to a huge bin where stocks are kept. This bin is also connected by railroad with the distillery, and the corn, upon being conveyed from the former to the latter, is thrown into the hopper of a large cornsheller, which separates the grains from the cobs with great rapidity. The corn being shelled, is carried by elevators to the second story of the building, and emptied into the hoppers of mills, by which it is ground, and the meal deposited in the first story. The cobs are taken by machinery from the sheller, and thrown into the vicinity of the boilers, where they are used for fuel. 66 The meal as it is ground is carried by elevators into the upper part of the building, and thence it is conveyed to the back part of the establishment, and deposited in large tanks on the first floor. Here the distillers make what they call mash. The cooking" is performed entirely by steam. From these tanks the mash is drawn off into other tanks of equal dimensions, situated on either side, where it goes through the cooling process, and receives the yeast. In the latter tanks the mash remains two or three days, until it becomes thoroughly worked by the yeast. Here it frequently spoils, in consequence of bad yeast, or unfavorable weather; but when no accident of this kind happens, it is drawn off and run into the still. The latter is about thirty feet high, and five or six feet in diameter. The mash is boiled in the lower part of this still, and the steam escapes through a pipe connecting the upper end of the still with the worm. The latter is set in a large cistern filled with cold water, and here the steam is condensed, and from this worm the whisky is drawn in the lower story, and thence it is run into a cistern in the "whisky-house," where it is barrelled and made ready for market. What remains in the still, after extracting the whiskey, is called "still-slop." This is drawn off into a tank, which stands out of doors, and it is upon this that distillery hogs are fed. The average time required to convert the corn into whisky is four days. In the one distillery mentioned, about one thousand bushels of corn are daily converted into whisky, producing about four thousand gallons of whisky, giving, for that single establishment, an annual destruction of three hundred and twelve thousand bushels of corn, and an annual production of one million two hundred and forty-eight thousand gallons of whisky. There are other distilleries in the neighborhood, the capacities of which are severally two or three times greater. The quantity of whisky sold during the year, in the Cincinnati markets alone, is estimated at nine millions of gallons. This is probably not more than one-half the production of Ohio and Indiana alone. Presuming that the production is eighteen million gallons, the consumption of corn must be four and a half million bushels, to produce which, requires a million and a quarter acres good land. It is probable that the production of whisky in the Ohio Valley is fifty millions of gallons per annum, involving a consumption of twelve and a half million bushels corn, the average value of which is $5,000,000. THE STOCK OF MANUFACTURING COMPANIES IN BOSTON IN 1856-'57. Under the appropriate departments in this Magazine we have given tabular statements of the fluctuations of bank, insurance, railroad, and other stocks in the Boston market. Below we annex a similar statement of the manufacturing stocks of New England, etc., sold in the Boston market in 1856-'57: *Boston Gas 24 per cent March, January, September and December. |