There Are Vast Boot And Shoe Factories, Which Would
Have Shod Our Whole Crimean Army In A Week, At One Of Which The Owner Pays
60,000 Dollars Or 12,000l. In Wages Annually!
It consumes 5000 pounds
weight of boot-nails per annum!
The manufactories of locks and guns,
tools, and carriages, with countless other appliances of civilized life,
are on a similarly large scale. Their products are to be found among the
sugar plantations of the south, the diggers of California, the settlers in
Oregon, in the infant cities of the far West, the tent of the hunter, and
the shanty of the emigrant; in one word, wherever demand and supply can be
placed in conjunction.
And while the demand is ever increasing as the tide of emigration rolls
westward, so the inventive brains of the Americans are ever discovering
some mechanical means of abridging manual labour, which seldom or ever
meets the demand. The saws, axes, and indeed all cutting tools made at
respectable establishments in the States, are said to be superior to ours.
On going into a hardware store at Hamilton in Upper Canada, I saw some
English spades and axes, and I suppose my face expressed some of the
admiration which my British pride led me to feel; for the owner, taking up
some spades and cutting-tools of Cincinnati manufacture, said, "We can
only sell these; the others are bad workmanship, and won't stand two days'
hard work."
Articles of English manufacture are not seen in considerable quantities in
the wholesale stores, and even the import of foreign wines has been
considerably diminished by the increasingly successful culture of the
grape in Ohio, 130,000 gallons of wine having been produced in the course
of the year.
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