As the navigation would be closed during the month of November, the above figures may be taken as representing not quite the whole amount transported for the year. It may be presumed the 52,000,000of bushels, as quoted above, will swell itself to 60,000,000. Iconfess that to my own mind statistical amounts do not bring home any enduring idea. Fifty million bushels of corn and flour simply seems to mean a great deal. It is a powerful form of superlative, and soon vanishes away, as do other superlatives in this age of strong words. I was at Chicago and at Buffalo in October, 1861. Iwent down to the granaries and climbed up into the elevators. Isaw the wheat running in rivers from one vessel into another, and from the railroad vans up into the huge bins on the top stores of the warehouses--for these rivers of food run up hill as easily as they do down. I saw the corn measured by the forty-bushel measure with as much ease as we measure an ounce of cheese and with greater rapidity. I ascertained that the work went on, week day and Sunday, day and night, incessantly--rivers of wheat and rivers of maize ever running. I saw the men bathed in corn as they distributed it in its flow. I saw bins by the score laden with wheat, in each of which bins there was space for a comfortable residence. I breathed the flour and drank the flour, and felt myself to be enveloped in a world of breadstuff. And then Ibelieved, understood, and brought it home to myself as a fact that here in the corn-lands of Michigan, and amid the bluffs of Wisconsin, and on the high table plains of Minnesota, and the prairies of Illinois had God prepared the food for the increasing millions of the Eastern World, as also for the coming millions of the Western.
I do not find many minds constituted like my own, and therefore Iventure to publish the above figures. I believe them to be true in the main; and they will show, if credited, that the increase during the last four years has gone on with more than fabulous rapidity.
For myself, I own that those figures would have done nothing unless I had visited the spot myself. A man can not, perhaps count up the results of such a work by a quick glance of his eye, nor communicate with precision to another the conviction which his own short experience has made so strong within himself; but to himself seeing is believing. To me it was so at Chicago and at Buffalo. Ibegan then to know what it was for a country to overflow with milk and honey, to burst with its own fruits and be smothered by its own riches. From St. Paul down the Mississippi, by the shores of Wisconsin and Iowa; by the ports on Lake Pepin; by La Crosse, from which one railway runs Eastward; by Prairie du Chien, the terminus of a second; by Dunleath, Fulton, and Rock Island, from whence three other lines run Eastward; all through that wonderful State of Illinois, the farmer's glory; along the ports of the Great Lakes;through Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, and further Pennsylvania, up to Buffalo? the great gate of the Western Ceres, the loud cry was this: "How shall we rid ourselves of our corn and wheat?" The result has been the passage of 60,000,000 bushels of breadstuffs through that gate in one year! Let those who are susceptible of statistics ponder that. For them who are not I can only give this advice: Let them go to Buffalo next October, and look for themselves.
In regarding the above figures, and the increase shown between the years 1860 and 1861, it must of course be borne in mind that, during the latter autumn, no corn or wheat was carried into the Southern States, and that none was exported from New Orleans or the mouth of the Mississippi. The States of Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana have for some time past received much of their supplies from the Northwestern lands; and the cutting off of this current of consumption has tended to swell the amount of grain which has been forced into the narrow channel of Buffalo. There has been no Southern exit allowed, and the Southern appetite has been deprived of its food. But taking this item for all that it is worth--or taking it, as it generally will be taken, for much more than it can be worth--the result left will be materially the same. The grand markets to which the Western States look and have looked are those of New England, New York, and Europe. Already corn and wheat are not the common crops of New England. Boston, and Hartford, and Lowell are fed from the great Western States. The State of New York, which, thirty years ago, was famous chiefly for its cereal produce, is now fed from these States. New York City would be starved if it depended on its own State; and it will soon be as true that England would be starved if it depended on itself. It was but the other day that we were talking of free trade in corn as a thing desirable, but as yet doubtful--but the other day that Lord Derby, who may be Prime Minister to-morrow, and Mr. Disraeli, who may be Chancellor of the Exchequer to-morrow, were stoutly of opinion that the corn laws might be and should be maintained--but the other day that the same opinion was held with confidence by Sir Robert Peel, who, however, when the day for the change came, was not ashamed to become the instrument used by the people for their repeal. Events in these days march so quickly that they leave men behind; and our dear old Protectionists at home will have grown sleek upon American flour before they have realized the fact that they are no longer fed from their own furrows.