The number of whaleships at the North in the year 1859, was Less number at the North this year than last, 51 ships. THE MADDER TRADE. 141 21 162 For the following statement of the madder trade we are indebted to Mr. CHARLES H. HAWES' Monthly Madder Circular, for July, 1860. The stock of French, in Boston and Providence, in importers' and speculators' hands, was 325 casks; Dutch, in Boston, 50 casks; Dutch garancine, in Boston, 40 casks; French madder, in New York, including lots to arrive not already contracted for, 616 casks; Dutch, in New York, in importers' and speculators' hands, 500 casks; Dutch and French garancine, in New York, 450 casks. The following are the shipments of madder and garancine, from Marseilles to the United States to July 1st, 1860 :- The following is the total shipment of madder and garancine, in casks, from Marseilles to New York and Boston, for the years following 1854 1855... 1856... 1857... 1858... 1859.... Equal to Total Or total shipments for six years.. Or an average per year of....... The total imports of madder roots into Boston, for the month of June, 1860, was 400 bales. By the above, it is shown that the importations of both madder and garancine, for the past six months, were only equal to the average importation of the past six years for the same period of time, and estimating that the consumption should naturally increase, (now estimated at 6 a 7,000 casks annually in the United States,) and that, with the advanced prices on the other side, many orders will be cut off, it is but fair to look for a corresponding rise in price on this side, on all good and reliable brands. Many of our manufacturers fear to purchase here, thinking that they do not secure as pure an article as when ordered through their own agents abroad. There are some grounds for this belief, as very impure and mixed French, as well as Dutch, madders have been and are still imported, but it is doing our merchants great injustice to believe that there are none, or even but few, who can and do import madder free from all adulteration, and many of these goods are of the very same brands ordered by manufacturers themselves. By watching the markets closely, there are times when both articles can be bought to better advantage in our home markets than to be entirely bound to foreign markets. Madder root is likely to be more freely used hereafter, and several of our largest manufacturers now grind the article, their experience showing them that they obtain a better and more desirable color from the root ground here, than from the imported madder itself. The Smyrna root has thus far proved superior to all others imported, although several parcels are now on the way from Bombay, and in course of being ordered on trial. COTTON PRODUCTION. The New York Shipping List remarks:-Not a little anxiety has been excited among the cotton manufacturers of England by the prevalence of an opinion that the demand for cotton is increasing much more rapidly than is the slave population of the United States. It is supposed that each slave can produce a fixed quantity and no more, and that, as the increase of the number of slaves is limited by certain fixed natural laws, the limit of the production of cotton is defined by the ratio in which that part of the population is augmented. This method of estimating the prospective crops of the United States is commonly resorted to by writers and practical men in Europe, with all confidence that its results are as certain as the demonstrations of Euclid. It is singular that it should never have occurred to these parties that it might be well to test their calculation by the facts of experience. Nothing could be easier, and one would suppose nothing more accordant with common sense. To have done so, however, would have scarcely accorded with the purpose which writers on this subject across the Atlantic generally have in view, viz.: to depreciate the capacity of North America as a cotton producing country. A simple comparison of any two decades in the history of our cotton crops would have shown the entire fallacy of their estimates. They would have ascertained that what they assume as a fixed fact, viz.: an unfluctuating proportion between the number of the slave population and amount of cotton produced, is in truth a mere fiction, and that consequently the ground work of their calculations is fallacious. It has not yet been ascertained what is the largest amount of cotton that can be produced by slave labor in this country; for the crops have been constantly increasing in a larger proportion than has the slave population. In proportion as the value of cotton has advanced, the slave population has been drafted from other pursuits to the cotton plantations; and hence it will be found that the production of other staples in the South has progressed much less rapidly than has the growth of cotton. In 1800, when the cotton crop was only 35,000 bales, the number of slaves in the country was 857,095, showing an average of twenty-four slaves to the bale. Twenty years later the number of slaves had nearly doubled, while the production of cotton had increased nearly fifteen fold, so that then there were three slaves to each bale of cotton. During the ten succeeding years the cotton crop increased in the ratio of seventy-five per cent, and the number of slaves thirtythree per cent, which brought down the number of slaves to each cotton bale to 21. From 1830, up to the present time, the proportion has continued to decline steadily, until now the production of cotton is as 14 bale to each of the slave population. The following table shows this progress during each decade since 1800: It is strikingly apparent from this comparison that the number of the slave population is a most imperfect criterion by which to judge of the probable future production of this staple. Experience teaches us to expect a larger ratio. of increase in the cotton crop than in the number of slaves; but how much larger the ratio will prove in the former case than in the latter, it is impossible to estimate. This must depend to a certain extent on the numbers that can yet be drawn from other kinds of labor by reason of the greater profitableness of cotton culture. But not by any means on this alone, nor perhaps on this chiefly. The most advanced planters have shown that very much may be done towards increasing the produce per acre by improved methods of culture. The history of agriculture during the last ten years shows that, by skillful management, land may be made to produce nearly double what it has yielded under old systems of culture; and there can be no doubt that the introduction of the same enlightened views among the Southern planters will issue in a large increase in our cotton crops, and the more so as the fertility of the virgin soil has to such a large extent become exhausted as to cause a need for artificial aids. THE SUGAR TRADE OF SAN FRANCISCO. The San Francisco Sugar Refining Company publish the following circular in relation to the sugar trade of that port:- Estimated stock of sugar and syrup held in San Francisco, Nov. 1, 1860, (in first hands): Raw sugars-Light grocery grades of China, Batavia, and Siam, 5.078.000 lbs., do. for refining, (San Francisco Sugar Refining Co.,) 3,048,242 lbs. Yellow-Grocery sugars, including New Orleans, Sandwich Islands, and coffee crushed, 1,062,000 lbs. Refined sugars--Crushed, powdered, etc., Eastern and California manufacture, 1,456,000 lbs. Total, 10,644,242 lbs. Syrupsabout 106,000 gallons. Quantity of domestic refined sugars manufactured in San Francisco during October, 1860: White sugars-Crushed, powdered, etc., 2,310 bbls. and 1,330 boxes; coffee crushed sugars, 912 bbls.; syrup, 23,800 gallons. Sugars on the way to San Francisco from Eastern ports: Manifested up to and including the Skylark, New York, Sept. 27, 1860, 5,093 bbls. and 1,596 half bbls.; manifested up to and including the Syren, Boston, Sept. 26, 1860, 317 hhds,; reported from Cuba direct, the Emily W. Seabourne, light muscovado sugar, about 700,000 lbs. (Advices of shipments from the Sandwich Islands, Manila, China, Siam, Batavia, and Calcutta are not received in advance of arrivals.) Estimated consumption of sugar and syrup in California, Oregon, and British Columbia, per month, based on the consumption from 1st January, 1858, to 31st December, 1859, (24 months :) Refined sugars-Consumption in 24 months, 98,830 bbls. Yellow sugars-Consumption in 24 months equal to 67,072 bbls. In yellow sugars are included coffee crushed, West India, New Orleans, Sandwich Islands, Bally sugar from Calcutta and Mauritius, the whole imports in bbls., hhds., and bags, 24 months, deducting parcels taken out of the market for export or refining. East India sugars-Light grocery kinds, consumption in 24 months, 16,827,387 lbs. In this grade are included China, Siam, Batavia, Date, and Mexican sugars, taking total imports and deducting exports and parcels taken for refining. Average monthly consumption of sugar, 2,181,424 lbs., including 823,600 lbs. refined, 656,825 lbs. yellow, and 701,000 lbs. East Indies. The population of the State has received but a slight increase since the average of the above dates. At the present time the arrivals and departures by the seaboard are about equal. The Indian troubles in the spring of 1860, have almost entirely prevented overland emigration. The Pacific Refinery Company's works are in progress. It is expected to be in operation by the 1st of July, 1861-capacity about 10,000,000 pounds per annum. The two refineries in California will then be adequate to refine 22,000,000 pounds annually. THE FUR TRADE OF THE WEST. The St. Louis Democrat has some statistics showing the extent of the fur trade in that city, from which we find that the number of robes from the Upper Missouri is larger than last season's receipts. The collections from the Red River of the North, or the robes sold at St. Paul, are some 3,000 less than last year's, and a falling off of some 4,000 robes is also noted in the collections from the Upper Platte and Arkansas rivers, as the hunting grounds in that direction are becoming frequented by gold hunters, and the place of the Indian is being occupied by the whites. In the receipts from the Osage country there is a falling off this year of nearly one-half; last season some 6,000 to 7,000 robes were had from that source-this year not exceeding 2,000 to 2,500. The buffalo robes from the Upper Missouri this year, as we learn from the two houses which receive them, number 66,000, besides the usual proportion of other furs. Those from the Platte region 11,000, with some forty packs, or 500 robes, yet to come in, and from the Osage some 2,000 to 2,500-in all 79,600 buffalo robes, besides the red calf skins. These, at $3 25 per robe, the price at which the main bulk has already been sold, amounts to $258,700. Of these were re ceived 28,000 robes, together with the usual proportion of other furs, by the steamer Spread Eagle, recently arrived from the Upper Missouri, 350 miles above the mouth of the Yellow Stone, consigned to and sold by ROBERT CAMPBELL & Co. Since then the steamers Key West and Chippewa, which ascended the Missouri all the way to Fort Benton, arrived in St. Louis with PIERRE CHOUTEAU & Co.'s collection, consisting of 30,000 buffalo robes, 50 packages, or 1,300 red calf skins, 2,270 wolf skins, 2,800 prairie fox skins, 5,000 pounds deer, and 9,860 pounds elk skins; 8 bales of bear skins, 7 bales of antelope, &c. Thus making 66,000 buffalo robes from the country of the Blackfeet Indians at the head of the Missouri River, or some three thousand miles from the mouth of that stream. In round numbers, the receipts of robes at St. Louis this year may be placed at 80,000. These, it must be recollected, are all tanned by Indian squaws alone, the braves, or lords of creation, not stooping to such menial toil. They do the hunting alone. Immense numbers of buffalo are killed for meat alone, and in summer and other seasons when the skin is comparatively bare of wool or hair, and comparatively worthless. The robes taken in winter are best. Probably not over a tenth of those slaughtered furnish us robes; so that the whole number of buffalo killed during the season will reach 800,000; quite a sizable drove, yet one that would scarcely be missed out of the immense herds that yearly roam over the vast plains of the Missouri River. The number of robes on the market this year will be considerably less than last season. Owing to the pressure of 1857, and the warm winter of 1858, large numbers of robes, some 50,000, were left over in New York. TRADE AND PROSPECTS OF ST. MARY'S. The St. Mary's Advertiser has been furnished with the following statement of the export traffic from St. Mary's during the past year: These returns are compiled from authentic sources. The classified articles of produce comprise the actual quantities purchased by the different buyers in the St. Mary's market, in the course of the last season. The timber and miscellaneous goods were purchased either in St. Mary's, or adjacent townships, and shipped from this station in the nine months ending June last. As a wheat market, St. Mary's has hitherto labored under difficulties and disadvantages which will not cramp its operations in future. For some time during the briskest of the wheat buying season last year, our wheat market was almost shut against the farmers. The railway-embarrassed with the new arrangements of its through line--could not furnish cars for shipping more than a small proportion of the wheat brought in for sale; and there was then no storage accommodation in the village. Such impediments discouraged the larger |