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. Wines resembling hock, claret, and champagne are made, and
good judges speak very highly of them.
Cincinnati is famous for its public libraries and reading-rooms. The Young
Men's Mercantile Library Association has a very handsome suite of rooms
opened as libraries and reading-rooms, the number of books amounting to
16,000, these, with upwards of 100 newspapers, being well selected by a
managing committee; none of our English works of good repute being a-
wanting. The facility with which English books are reprinted in America,
and the immense circulation which they attain in consequence of their
cheapness, greatly increases the responsibility which rests upon our
authors as to the direction which they give, whether for good or evil, to
the intelligent and inquiring minds of the youth of America - minds
ceaselessly occupied, both in religion and politics, in investigation and
inquiry - in overturning old systems before they have devised new ones.
I believe that the most important religious denominations in Cincinnati
are the Episcopalian, the Baptist, and the Wesleyan. The first is under
the superintendence of the learned and pious Bishop M'Ilvaine, whose
apostolic and untiring labours have greatly advanced the cause of religion
in the State of Ohio. There is a remarkable absence of sectarian spirit,
and the ministers of all orthodox denominations act in harmonious
combination for the general good. But after describing the beauty of her
streets, her astonishing progress, and the splendour of her shops, I must
not close this chapter without stating that the Queen City bears the less
elegant name of Porkopolis; that swine, lean, gaunt, and vicious-looking,
riot through her streets; and that, on coming out of the most splendid
stores, one stumbles over these disgusting intruders. Cincinnati is the
city of pigs. As there is a railway system and a hotel system, so there is
also a pig system, by which this place is marked out from any other.
Huge quantities of these useful animals are reared after harvest in the
corn-fields of Ohio, and on the beech-mast and acorns of its gigantic
forests. At a particular time of year they arrive by thousands - brought in
droves and steamers to the number of 500,000 - to meet their doom, when it
is said that the Ohio runs red with blood! There are huge slaughterhouses
behind the town, something on the plan of the abattoirs of Paris - large
wooden buildings, with numerous pens, from whence the pigs march in single
file along a narrow passage, to an apartment where each, on his entrance,
receives a blow with a hammer, which deprives him of consciousness, and in
a short time, by means of numerous hands, and a well-managed caldron
system, he is cut up ready for pickling. The day on which a pig is killed
in England constitutes an era in the family history of the year, and
squeals of a terrific description announce the event to the neighbourhood.
There is not time or opportunity for such a process at Porkopolis, and the
first notification which the inhabitants receive of the massacre is the
thousand barrels of pork on the quays, ready to be conveyed to the
Atlantic cities, for exportation to the European markets. At one
establishment 12,000 pigs are killed, pickled, and packed every fall; and
in the whole neighbourhood, as I have heard in the cars, the "hog crop" is
as much a subject of discussion and speculation as the cotton crop of
Alabama, the hop-picking of Kent, or the harvest in England.
Kentucky, the land, by reputation, of "red horses, bowie-knives, and
gouging," is only separated from Ohio by the river Ohio; and on a day when
the thermometer stood at 103° in the shade I went to the town of
Covington. Marked, wide, and almost inestimable, is the difference between
the free state of Ohio and the slave-state of Kentucky. They have the same
soil, the same climate, and precisely the same natural advantages; yet the
total absence of progress, if not the appearance of retrogression and
decay, the loungers in the streets, and the peculiar appearance of the
slaves, afford a contrast to the bustle on the opposite side of the river,
which would strike the most unobservant. I was credibly informed that
property of the same real value was worth 300 dollars in Kentucky and 3000
in Ohio! Free emigrants and workmen will not settle in Kentucky, where
they would be brought into contact with compulsory slave-labour; thus the
development of industry is retarded, and the difference will become more
apparent every year, till possibly some great changes will be forced upon
the legislature. Few English people will forget the impression made upon
them by the first sight of a slave - a being created in the image of God,
yet the boná fide property of his fellow-man. The first I saw was an
African female, the slave of a lady from Florida, with a complexion black
as the law which held her in captivity.
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