THE

MERCHANTS' MAGAZINE

AND

COMMERCIAL REVIEW.

APRIL, 1863.

THE PAST AND FUTURE OF THE WEST.

THE EFFECT OF THIS WAR ON THE MISSISSIPPI-THE WEST AS THE CENTER OF MANUFACTURES.

THE Census returns for 1860, compared with those of 1850 and 1840, furnish most interesting evidence respecting the actual and relative growth of the different sections of our country. In contemplating, however, this progress for the last ten years, the observer is especially struck with the fact that the West, wonderfully gifted by nature, has been receiving contributions to her wealth from all sections of the Union, and even from the whole world, until now she is returning the gift a thousand-fold. A flood of emigrants from the Eastern States, and from Europe, accompanied by a stream of capital for the construction of railroads and other internal improvements, have been poured on to its rich lands, making almost all portions accessible, and furnishing cheap transportion to market. Thus the vast material wealth of the whole region, mining and agricultural, has been, as it were, tapped by a hundred avenues, and flowed eastward in multiplying streams to feed the nation's commerce and add to the nation's wealth. The present seems to have confirmed what the sagacious had before discovered that the West contained within its teeming bosom all the elements of future opulence and power, far in excess of that of any other known country. Food, climate, minerals, metals, water carriage—all are within reach, and we may therefore confidently expect that another census will tell the story of one more progressive step taken, and the West will have become not only the granary of the world, but the seat of manufactures for this continent at least.

Let us look a moment at the past. The growth of California has always been considered by many as unprecedented, and yet with all her

VOL. XLVIII.-NO. IV.

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gold and silver her attractions have not proved more seductive to enterprising settlers than the wealth of the West. Thus, in 1850, the fame of the latter State had attracted to it 92,597 persons, and Wisconsin then numbered 305,000. In 1860 California had gained 292,173, and Wisconsin 463,485. By the following table will be seen at a glance the relative increase in the free population of the different sections of the United States since 1790:*

These figures show the curious fact that the population of the West has nearly doubled every ten years, and in the last ten years the white population of the South increased more than that of the North; doubtless owing to the fact that the West derived a large portion of its 3,700,000 of increase from the Northern and Eastern States. The census of 1860 has not given the nativities of the population. That of 1850 gave the Western population as follows:

Persons in the Western States born there...

2,501,633

There were also 57,296 born West living at the South, and 19,696 born West living at the East. Of the population of the Northeastern States at the same time, 1,292,241 persons were born abroad, and 1,090,814 natives of the Eastern States migrated to the West, and 337,765 to the South; making 1,428,579 emigrants South and West, whose places in the East were supplied by 1,292,241 of the "pauper labor" of Europe. In the ten years which have elapsed since that census the West has gained 3,700,000 persons. The immigration into the Union during the same period was 2,444,624, which, with its natural increase deducted from the whole number, leaves 24,928,271 as the population of the United States by natural inorease alone from 1850, being at the rate of 25 per cent in ten years, or 2 per cent per annum. The Northern population in the same time increased 25 per cent, the Southern 38 per cent,

*The Southern section includes fourteen States, Maryland, Delaware, District of Columbia, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas, Missouri, Mississippi, Kentucky, Arkansas, Tennessee, Florida. The North embraces the New England States, New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey. The West, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, Kansas, Utah, Nebraska, California, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, Colorado, Dakota, Nevada.