gives no dinners or soirées meets with much unpalatable formality and stiffness in his daily walks. It is probable, therefore, that this office would not be sought for by the proper kind of persons. I have said $2,500 as the highest. Who would be the seekers for berths of less value? Why, most likely, in the second place, by men of desperate fortunes; many of them active politicians, as they are called, who, after having served their candidates at the election polls, would claim a consulate as the reward of service to such a one $1,500 or $2,000 a year would seem untold wealth. Nearly one whole year's salary, however, would be anticipated in outfits consular dress, dresses for his family, if he has one, and in passage money. The new functionary would arrive at his station. He might have been a doctor, or kept a country store, or been a lawyer, or anything else before he became the active politician; but, salaried as he is, does it make him the person fitted to advise, counsel, and defend his needy countrymen in commercial matters, or is he qualified to keep his government informed on matters of trade? And let it be asked of those who are so anxious that our consuls should be salaried, and not practical merchants, whether the nine men out of the ten who would alone seek and obtain such livings, would be likely to be the men we would delight to honor, love, and respect? In a short four years, if he managed to go at large for so long a time, a new set of men, at home, would come in office, and new consular appointments would be made to satisfy new claimants for services, and our consul would be obliged to find his way back, but little richer in purse or reputation than when he left his country. Indeed, the new consular system seems to inspire so little confidence among its projectors themselves, that it is gravely proposed by one of them to appoint one or more inspectors, whose duty it would be to go the rounds of the different consular stations, to see, by personal inspection, that these functionaries faithfully and honestly earn their yearly stipends! What man, possessed of a particle of gentlemanly feelings, would accept of an office which would subject him to a system of espionage, as disgusting as it is unknown to the American people in any branch of their civil administration? The present consular establishment is coeval with our political existence. It has, with few exceptions, been entrusted to our mercantile fellow-citizens residing abroad; and although all the appointments cannot have been happy ones, yet it has generally done good service, without costing the government one dollar in the way of salaries. The fees of the greatest part of our consuls are so trifling, as to be hardly sufficient to meet their office expenses, and therefore they must look to their exertions as merchants for their daily support, the expenses of which are increased by the mode of living which the consular appointment compels them to adopt. It is reasonable to conclude, that it would be quite impossible for persons of very ordinary abilities, or of questionable character, to carry on mercantile dealings to an extent, the profits of which would not enable them to support such expenses. The business of the most part of our consuls is agency or commission, and obtained only through good character and business talents. Now, as without these qualifications the stream of pros perity does not flow, it results, that he who does not possess them must give up to him who does; and hence the honorable position occupied by most of our consuls-a position which, as has been already said, loses nothing by comparison with similar officials of other countries. But let Congress attach a salary to the appointment, and the country will be represented abroad, I fear me, by a very different set of persons; mere traders in politics, be they Whigs, Tories, Locofocos, or any other agitators floating on the surface of circumstances. I have the honor to be, sir, your most obedient servant, Art. V.-COMMERCIAL CITIES AND TOWNS OF THE UNITED STATES. NUMBER II. ROCHESTER: ITS MILLS, FACTORIES, ETC. THIS growing city affords no inferior specimen of the success of Yankee enterprise, and the rapidity of Yankee improvement. Having drawn many of its leading citizens from New England, the habits, views, principles, and tastes of their birth-place have been brought with them, and have greatly contributed to make the once famous emporium of the flour business one of the handsomest flowers in our land; having a population now greater than many of the oldest cities of Europe-than Oxford, Cambridge, Exeter, and Greenwich, in England; than Rochelle or Bayonne, in France; than Salamanca, Bilboa, Badajoz, or Burgos, in Spain; than Pisa or Mantua, in Italy; than any city in Norway or Wales. According to the census of 1840, there were in the city one commission and one commercial house in foreign trade, with a capital of $15,100; 266 retail dry goods and other stores, with a capital of $1,238,890; two lumber-yards, with a capital of $30,000; 404 men engaged in internal transportation, with 71 butchers, packers, &c., employed a capital of $156,000; 53 persons produced machinery to the amount of $48,000; 25 persons manufactured hardware and cutlery to the amount of $2,000; 10 persons manufactured 250 small arms; 14 persons manufactured the precious metals to the amount of $8,600; 75 persons manufactured various metals to the amount of $95,900; 116 persons produced granite and marble to the amount of $57,000, with a capital of $7,600; four persons manufactured granite and marble to the amount of $5,000; 49 persons made bricks and lime to the amount of $14,015; four fulling-mills and four woollen factories employed 69 persons, producing to the amount of $59,000, with a capital of $58,616; one cotton factory, with 3,000 spindles, employed 80 persons, produced to the amount of $40,000, with a capital of $50,000; 58 persons manufactured tobacco to the amount of $73,000, with a capital of $16,000; hats and caps were manufactured to the amount of $44,900, and straw bonnets to the amount of $1,600, the whole em. ploying 196 persons, and a capital of $23,625; three tanneries produced 3,760 sides of sole leather, and 5,200 sides of upper leather, employing 165 persons, and a capital of $128,500; saddlery, and other manufactures of leather, produced to the amount of $246,500, with a capital of $50,725 ; 11 persons produced soap and candles to the amount of $33,500; three distilleries produced 195,000 gallons of distilled spirits, and three breweries 204,960 gallons of beer, the whole employing 37 persons, and a capital of $60,300; 21 persons produced drugs and paints to the amount of $42,000, and turpentine and varnish to the amount of $450, with a capital of $45,500; two persons produced glass to the amount of $3,000, with a capital of $1,000; one pottery, employing five persons, produced to the amount of $3,500, with a capital of $1,500; 16 persons produced confec tionary to the amount of $22,700, with a capital of $6,750; two paper. mills, employing 27 persons, produced to the amount of $35,000, with a capital of $22,500; one rope-walk, employing six persons, produced cordage to the amount of $7,000, with a capital of $5,500; four persons manufactured musical instruments to the amount of $5,000, with a capital of $5,000; 84 persons manufactured carriages and wagons to the amount of $70,600, with a capital of $35,900; 22 flouring-mills produced 311,665 barrels of flour, and with eight saw-mills and one oil-mill, employed 256 persons, producing to the amount of $1,841,975, with a capital of $945,600; vessels were built to the amount of $74,200; 284 persons manufactured furniture to the amount of $41,700, with a capital of $113,400; nine printing-offices, one bindery, four daily, five weekly newspapers, and two periodicals, employed 82 persons, and a capital of $32,560; 61 brick or stone, and 69 wooden houses were built, employing 418 persons, and cost $401,270. The total capital employed in manufactures was $1,963,017. The facts which we are about to offer, exhibit but a part of the business carried on here—they are abundant to warrant a steady growth of the city for years to come. One kind of business is supposed, abroad, to be the only means of prosperity within this population of nearly 30,000. We shall begin with the flour-mills and trade, only, as a suitable introduction to many other and more successful modes of business effort. The first grist-mill in Genesee county was miserably constructed, as might have been expected, in 1789. It had only one run of stone; and, after a little use, ground but ten bushels per day. The race was so unskilfully made as to be sometimes dry in summer, and flooded with backwater in winter. People came to it, however, from thirty miles around, as the only thing of its kind. This mill was substantially the beginning of Rochester, humble as that beginning appears. A saw-mill was connected with the grist-mill. There being hardly business enough to keep the concern alive, they were abandoned. In 1807, a mill with one pair of stones was erected by Charles Harford, where the Phoenix Mills now stand. In 1812, it was bought by F. Brown, who enlarged it to three pairs of stones, and improved it otherwise. It was destroyed by fire in 1818, when the present building grew up out of its ashes. The following is a list of the flouring-mills and their occupants : Some of these mills are directly upon the Erie Canal, and possess such machinery, that a cargo of 1,000 bushels can be unloaded in an hour and a half, and raised up fifty feet into the mill, and the flour be placed on board in the same time, not requiring a boat to change her position at all during the operation. In 1814, a few hundred barrels were manufactured here for the troops on the Niagara frontier, the first that went beyond a supply of the immediate neighborhood with the main staple for food. Until 1815, very little wheat or flour was sent out of Genesee county. The crop being short in Canada that year, flour suddenly rose in Rochester, and for four weeks held the high price of fifteen dollars per barrel. But the 29th of October, 1822, a quarter of a century ago, saw the first canal-boat load of flour leave the east side of the Genesee River for Little Falls, where the canal then stopped. On the first few days of canal navigation, in 1823, 10,000 barrels of flour were shipped for Albany. In 1831, the first cargo of wheat came from Ohio, (an important event in the business of the place,) consigned to Hervey Ely. Now, the shipments by canal of flour from Rochester, for the three past years, run thus : Over 600,000 barrels of flour were manufactured here the past year, and the proportion of this year is a very decided increase. Wheat was The following table will show the sources that supply wheat for the Ro During the last year, the flour barrels weighed here upon the canal, amounted to 2,218,370; the bushels of wheat weighed, 2,243,255. Of the flour, 549,000 barrels were manufactured here; of the wheat, 159,000 bushels were shipped here. The barrels required for the flour business annually, are computed to be worth over $200,000; and, with the other cooperage required, to amount to $250,000. Not quite all, however, is spent in the city itself. This is pretty well for a place where, in 1813, the Indians solemnized publicly one of their sacrificial feasts; where a bridge over the Genesee, one of the determining circumstances in population, was not completed till 1812, and was remonstrated against as a needless waste of money; where, at the beginning of 1816, the population numbered but 331, and the first newspaper, tavern, and religious society came into being, the latter consisting of sixteen members; where, at that date, the swamps, now forming much of the western half of the city, were full of game, and two deer were shot in the very heart of the village-one near the main bridge, the other by the Rochester House. We pass now to the canal business of Rochester. A great share of the boat-building for the whole Erie Canal, as well as for other canals, is performed here. Owing to the rapid decay of boats, by straining in the locks and striking one another, and the necessity of employing none but those perfectly water-tight, these small dock-yards have exhibited the utmost activity during both summer and winter. The numerous saw-mills on the Genesee have reaped a rich harvest by their help, and regular employment is given the year round to large numbers of very intelligent mechanics. In 1846, one stick of timber was hauled into the city for Howell's yard, 42 feet at the butt, 23 at the top, and 63 feet long, which weighed 19 tons. In February, 1847, however, this monster was quite eclipsed by a stick 61 feet long, 5 feet 3 inches at the butt, and 3 feet 1 inch in the middle. This forest-size came from the adjacent town of Gates. The various yards are as follows:— It is gratifying to know that the Rochester boats bear a high character abroad; that very many of them now float on the Ohio and Pennsylvania canals, and a large number are to enter this season on the Wabash and Erie. Connected with these as subsidiaries, are the several steam planing. mills, viz: Troy and Ohio Line...... Taylor & Brown's............. (Not yet in operation.) The forwarding companies next deserve notice. They are 14 in num. ber, as follows: Western Transportation Company. |