apprenticeship in the fishing business. The school is in continual operation -the green hands constantly entering to take the place of those who have gone from them on board of merchantmen. In fact, a very large portion of those regularly employed as fishermen in the proper season, are engaged during the winter, sometimes with the same vessels used in the summer, in the coasting trade, running from Massachusetts to Maine, and from either of these places to New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, New Orleans, and to the West Indies. Some of the fishing graduates find their way, even in time of peace, on board the national vessels; but these are few, the greater part of them having more energy and a better business than is to be supposed of seamen attached to the naval service in time of peace. In case of war, however, they are always ready to fill the navy, and are soon perfectly at home, in that new sphere, acquainted with every rope, familiar with every particular of service, and fearless of every danger.

There are many who suppose that fishermen, as a class, are a poor, reckless, and ignorant set of people, who gain a bare subsistence by their toil, which is so hard as to brutalize, and so incessant as to leave no time for the acquisition of knowledge, intercourse with the world, or even for learning the practice of the ordinary amenities of life. This opinion arises, probably, in the first place, from what has been said, and very correctly, by travelers and others, regarding the fishing communities of some parts of Europe, and of other places; in a limited degree, the opinion may also be true of some small fishing settlements in our own country. But these, besides being very few and insignificant, as regards their relation to the whole body of fishermen, owe their position to peculiar circumstances of situation. When found at all, it is on some island, placed almost out of reach of intercourse with the main land, almost incapable of sustaining vegetable life, perhaps a mere rock, or on a strand whose inhospitality drives civilized life to a respectable distance-in such cases, men may be found, depending on the ocean, for almost their whole support, and that a humble one; rough and illiterate, too, but yet honest and manly, and dignified with traits that would dishonor character in no class of life.

But with the mass of our fishermen, the case is widely different from this. Their pursuit is, in the first place, one irrespective of the immediate necessity of food. Fish are not sought for their own and immediate subsistence, any more than every chapeau turned off by the hatter is made solely for the necessities of his own cranium. The fisherman has his market, like the rest, and a large one, too, and the profits of his vocation, to say the least, are as good in the average as those of the generality of other trades. He has as much variety in his food, therefore, wears as good holiday clothes, has as good a house, and enjoys much of the comforts and the luxuries as well-of life-as his neighbors. He reads his newspapers, his books, and takes as much interest as others in the general course of affairs. He has a fair understanding of local politics, has his opinion regarding the measures of the national administration, and the theories of the leading parties, and throws an independent vote. Set among the most intelligent of the laboring class, (with whom, indeed, he freely mixes,) he is their equal, feels himself so, and must be so recognized, since no difference is perceptible. Or, if there is any difference to be observed, the fisherman, seeing more of the physical world, and having his disposition to see, inquire, and inform himself, stimulated by the nature of his business, acquires a more intelligent, a more free, open, gen erous disposition-a better balanced mind than his neighbor who is pinned

to a small locality, where he has no change of scene; and especially if the work-place be bounded in by brick walls that make him almost a stranger to the light and air of day. These conditions of mind, joined with a well developed body, (the natural result of a healthful occupation,) are certainly no mean advantages. They are connected with, and would lead us to look for the development of many of the best qualities of human nature. Such men are naturally benevolent, active, enterprising, ambitious, emulative, keenly sensitive to honor and disgrace. They make good citizens, good neighbors, good sailors, are clever in many ways out of their profession, and are, finally, fit men for any enterprise requiring skill, daring, and intelligence.

The towns in which the fishermen form the preponderating part of the population compare favorably with other towns and villages. If the houses are not elegant, they are neat, substantial and comfortable. They are quiet and orderly, with the help of very little police regulation. As regards crime, their statistics would show much less than in other towns of the same population. If not fanatic in religion, they are commendable in morals, respectful of religious institutions and observances, and as heedful as most classes in regard to spiritual concerns. They have their fair proportion of churches, maintain good schools, and support charitable and other societies. Their municipal affairs are well administered, and they are at no loss for good men to sit as jurors, to act as moderators of public meetings, to serve as county officers, or to send as their representatives to the august "Great and General Court."

Talleyrand, who once made a hasty trip over some parts of the country, many years ago, stopping nowhere long enough to get a fair view of anything, undertook, in a little book which he published on his return, to give the world his impressions of America. In this volume which might properly have been entitled "Midnight Glimpses of America and the Americans, he caricatures two classes, the fishermen and the Western settler, in attempting to describe the vices of men he had never seen. He coolly pretended to have observed in the fishermen a lack of patriotism--a total absence of the sentiment attaching men to their country-disregard to all its rights and interests, and perfect indifference to the form and administration of the government. Now, the very reason which the veracious diplomat assigns for this unhappy disposition-the only attempt he makes to give a physical fact in the case-exposes his utter ignorance of the men, and the condition of the men, whose portrait he professed to be drawing. The reason of their stoic indifference to the form and personnel of their government, was, because they escaped the fate of other subjects, whoever ruled, and however. Passing the greater part of their lives out at sea, in their small boats, and coming, ashore only to make brief stops, the ocean, Monsieur Talleyrand sagely discovered, was more their home than the land. All their hopes, sympathies, and desires were there, and they had no superfluous anxieties to waste respecting the management of affairs upon an element in which they had so little concern. Cradled on the billow, housed on the foam, why should they regard the land, and the things of the land, any more than their piscatory brethren in the sea? Probably M. Talleyrand would have expected as soon to hear of the sea-serpent sitting on a rock, and reading the morning news, or of the arrival of a delegation of mermen to inquire the health of the Secretary of the Navy, as to have heard a fisherman talking about the proceedings of Congress; or knowing what was meant by Jay's Treaty, or Wash

ington's Proclamation of Neutrality. Had he allowed them any interest in politics at all, he would, doubtless, have referred it to the court and cabinet of Neptune; but such ignorant beings could not know anything of classic mythology, farther than one or two odd tales of the sea were connected with it, and therefore they were set down as men of no country, no politics, no law, no religion-they did not rise to the dignity of cosmopolites, and were but a series of irreducible human negatives.

M. Talleyrand's book, in what regards fishermen, might not have been at all a fiction had it been written of France. What he describes, we can well believe-indeed we think there can be no doubt-he either heard of or saw at home. His facts were true-the error was in misapplying them-in unwarrantably concluding that what fishermen were in one place, they were in all places.

The habits which M. de Talleyrand transfers from the denizens of the Bay of Biscay, and the Gulf of Lyons, to the inhabitants of the Cape Cod and Marblehead shore, are not more foreign to the real life of the latter, than the effect derived from these habits are from anything in their character. The American fisherman is eminently patriotic-no man in the Republic is more intensely national; his profession, although he does not live on the sea, does, it is true, engender a feeling of honest, manly independence-but one that stimulates, instead of weakening his devotion to his country. Of that country, no man, living between his own unproductive sands and the auriferous ones of California, is more proud-no man feels more keenly a tarnish upon its honor-none has a quicker spirit to resent an insult offered it. Let the country be at war, and no class are more ready to peril their lives, by sea or land, in its defence; and the experience of the war of 181215, justifies us in saying, none are its more efficient defenders.

Art. III.-COMMERCIAL CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE UNITED STATES.

NUMBER XXXI.

CHICAGO: ITS TRADE AND GROWTH IN 1851.

We have more than once endeavored, in the pages of the Merchants' Magazine, to do justice to the commercial capital of Illinois; but it would really require almost a monthly bulletin of "facts and figures" to keep up with the growth of Chicago, in population, in Commerce, and in wealth. Of that interesting group of Lake Cities-that young and vigorous growth of Western marts-which are becoming the centers of Western trade and manufactures, Chicago seems destined to take the first place-the "first among equals." The largest of these lake ports are Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukie, Cleveland, Monroe, Sandusky, and Toledo. They are all outlets of the grain region of the West, all points of import from the East, all growing with wonderful rapidity--which has become so much a matter of course, that the most surprising thing about it is that it almost fails to excite any wonder. Nothing less than a miracle of growth, such as that of Chicago, is sufficient to excite any special emotion in an American bosom, which has learned from daily experience of such things the practical philosophy "not to admire."

When, in 1830, General Scott visited the military post at Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago River, on Lake Michigan,.the little hamlet numbered, including the garrison, about two hundred inhabitants.

Six years afterward there were 456 arrivals at Chicago, which were equal to 60,000 tons, and in 1837 its population was 8,000, with 120 stores, (of no which 20 were wholesale,) 30 physicians, and 50 lawyers.

About five years ago a convention met at Chicago to further that policy of improvement of Western navigation to which the city may be said literally to owe its very existence. For it was on the representations of General Scott, made to Congress after his visit to Fort Dearborn in 1830, that the first appropriations were made for the improvement of its harbor by the erection of piers. How indispensable, how imperatively demanded by the interests of Western agriculture as well as trade, this policy was and is, is pretty plainly shown by the growth of Chicago, which sprung forward as a racehorse from the stand, the instant that measure of aid was given by Congress.

When, in July, 1847, this River and Harbor Convention met at Chicago, it contained, in round numbers, 17,000 inhabitants.

**

When, in 1848, we gave a sketch of the history and growth of Chicago, in the February number of the Merchants' Magazine, the city numbered 20,000.

On the 1st of January, 1852, its population is estimated at 40,000.

In a late number of this work, the statistics of the growth of towns in the United States were analyzed with much ability, with a view to establish the law or period of their duplication. The writer starts with the proposition, that "within one hundred years, the largest city of our country will be in the great valley embraced by the basins of the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi," and he closes with placing on permanent record, in the Merchants' Magazine, the prediction, that within a hundred years "Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and Toledo, will be the four largest cities in America." We may admit that, within the period mentioned, the bulk of our population will be in the West, but we think the writer loses sight of some of the most important influences which determine the population of cities, when he supposes than the one great center of city population will be elsewhere than on the Atlantic. The equilibrium of trade and civilization, not in America alone, but in the whole world, has got to be altered to produce a different result. The one point of densest population in a country with large foreign Commerce, will always be where the foreign product coming in meets and is exchanged with the domestic product going out. In the article referred to, tables are given showing the average time of duplication of a large number of towns in periods of ten years. The period for Chicago is four years, being, with that of Manchester, N. H., the shortest period of any town (Milwaukie excepted, whose period is three years) in the United States.

The interesting review of the trade and growth of Chicago, which we now lay before our readers, and which we take from the Chicago Tribune, which ably represents the interests of that city through the press, strikingly confirms these tables, and almost justifies this prediction. For three years past the Chicago Tribune has published annual statements, of this kind, and similar to those of the Commerce of St. Louis and Baltimore, which we recently republished. The republication of these reviews in a form which gives them permanence, for future reference and comparison, making them

• Vol. xviii., p. 164.

+ Merch. Mag. Nov. 1851, p. 559.

the marks and mile-posts of our material progress, has been received with such wide and general approbation, that we shall continue to give them, whenever they can be obtained in a reliable form, although pressed for space for other interesting matter in our crowded pages.

It is to be regretted that statistics of the Commerce of all our cities are not collected more carefully and systematically. We know of no more appropriate field of activity for local boards or Chambers of Commerce. Meanwhile, the enterprise of some of our leading commercial journals (as we have seen) is doing much to supply this want.

A few years hence some one of the 100,000 people of Chicago will find, perhaps, in the fiftieth volume of the Merchants' Magazine, some reference to these remarks, and looking back to this article, will smile at a growth of 20,000 in four years, as something that may have been unprecedented then, but was nothing wonderful in his day. The following review is interesting as exhibiting the growth not only of Chicago, but of Illinois, of which it is the great port of import as well as export. The fact that in 1851, over 125,000,000 boards, 60,000,000 shingles, and nearly 350,000,000 pounds of iron, were imported into Illinois, is significant of the rapid multiplication of buillings throughout the State, and to the imagination of a Political Economist, at once calls up the owners of comfortable dwellings and capacious barns, of fields inclosed and brought into cultivation, and of forests subdued.

ANNUAL REVIEW OF THE COMMERCE OF CHICAGO FOR THE YEAR 1851.

Up to the year 1836, provisions for domestic consumption were imported along with articles of merchandise; and indeed many articles of necessary food continued to be brought in for several years later. In 1836 there were exported from the port of Chicago, articles of produce of the value of $1,000 64. We have felt a great curiosity to know what articles constituted this first year's business, but have sought in vain for any other record save that which gives the value. The next year, the exports had increased to $11,065; and in 1838 they had reached the sum of $16,044 75. In 1839 they more than doubled the year previous, while in 1840 they had increased to what was then doubtless regarded as the very large sum of $228,635 74! This was progressing at a ratio very seldom equalled in the history of cities, and must have caused no little exhilaration among the business men of Chicago, as well as advanced the views of fort unate holders of water and corner lots.

We are informed in Judge Thomas's report that a "small lot of beef was shipped from Chicago as early as 1833, and was followed each successive year by a small consignment of this article, and also of pork." Some idea of the extent of the first consignment may be formed from the fact that three years after, the total exports of the place were valued at $1,000 64. It was truly a small begining, and gave but a slight promise of the great extent to which, as the sequel will show, this branch of business has grown. The same authority informs us that the first shipment of wheat from this port was made in the year 1839. In 1842 the amount shipped reached 586,907 bushels, and in 1848, 2,160,000 bushels were shipped out of the port of Chicago. Since that period there has been a material falling off in the annual exports of wheat, owing to a partial failure of the crop each succeeding year, and from the fact that farmers are paying more attention to other products.

We subjoin a table of the value of imports and exports from 1836 to 1848 inclusive: