All Or Nearly All This Transit Is By
Water; And There Can, I Think, Be No Doubt But That A Few Years
Will See It Reduced By Fifty Per Cent.
In October last the
Mississippi was closed, the railways had not rolling stock
sufficient for their work, the crops of the two last years had been
excessive, and there existed the necessity of sending out the corn
before the internal navigation had been closed by frost.
The
parties who had the transit in their hands put their heads
together, and were able to demand any prices that they pleased. It
will be seen that the cost of carrying a bushel of corn from
Chicago to Buffalo, by the lakes, was within one cent of the cost
of bringing it from New York to Liverpool. These temporary causes
for high prices of transit will cease; a more perfect system of
competition between the railways and the water transit will be
organized; and the result must necessarily be both an increase of
price to the producer and a decrease of price to the consumer. It
certainly seems that the produce of cereal crops in the valleys of
the Mississippi and its tributaries increases at a faster rate than
population increases. Wheat and corn are sown by the thousand
acres in a piece. I heard of one farmer who had 10,000 acres of
corn. Thirty years ago grain and flour were sent Westward out of
the State of New York to supply the wants of those who had
immigrated into the prairies; and now we find that it will be the
destiny of those prairies to feed the universe. Chicago is the
main point of exportation Northwestward from Illinois, and at the
present time sends out from its granaries more cereal produce than
any other town in the world. The bulk of this passes, in the shape
of grain or flour, from Chicago to Buffalo, which latter place is,
as it were, a gateway leading from the lakes, or big waters, to the
canals, or small waters. I give below the amount of grain and
flour in bushels received into Buffalo for transit in the month of
October during four consecutive years: -
In 1860, from the opening to the close of navigation, 30,837,632
bushels of grain and flour passed through Buffalo. In 1861, the
amount received up to the 31st of October was 51,969,142 bushels.
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 52,000,000
of bushels, as quoted above, will swell itself to 60,000,000. I
confess 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.
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