USA > Indiana > Perry County > Cannelton > Cannelton, Perry County, Ind., at the intersection of the eastern margin of the Illinois coal basin, by the Ohio River : its natural advantages as a site for manufacturing > Part 9
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It is, however, argued that the cheap labor and capital of olden countries will enable them to retain their monopoly of the cotton manufacture.
The same arguments were used when England began to receive the weavers of Flanders, when Slater was erecting his cotton frames in Rhode Island, and when lighter taxes and cheaper food in Belgium, Saxony, and Switzerland were attracting cotton machinery from England. We seem to forget that natural forces will always prove more potent than artificial forces; that men and mo- ney are more easily moved than iron, cotton, and food, and that the former need be moved but once, while the cost of moving the latter is perpetual.
Thus, better markets, cheaper food, and greater security to person and pro- perty induced to Flemish weavers to emigrate to England. The abundant
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iron and coal of Great Britain were natural advantages that enabled her to defy all manufacturing opposition for more than a century, even while engaged in wars over the world, and while increasing her national debt to a sum almost beyond computation. But, when her population passed the practical limit of a home supply of food, and was pressed down with taxes, Belgium, Saxony, and Prussia opened their mines of coal and iron, and as soon as they could co- py British machinery, successfully entered the field of competition; and had it not been for recent revolutions, and the insecurity of property on the conti- nent, Havre, Amsterdam, and the Haus towns would now divide with Eng- land the imports of our great staple.
The growth of the cotton manufacture in New England was the result of a superabundant population; of lighter taxes; of convenient and abundant water power, which. in the infancy of steam power, had a decided advantage, and of greater proximity to the material and our home market. Compared with our own, these advantages do not now exist in New England. The power of steam is now, where coal can be had at 10 cents the bushel, cheaper than that of water. The steam engine now does far more work, and with a much less expenditure of fuel, than it did ten or twenty years ago There is now a large deficien y of food in New England. and her sterile land has now reached such prices that labor must be driven frou it, if it can find as eligible and cheaper positions of employment elsewhere.
We have every element that enters cotton cloth, and at average prices far cheaper than elsewhere. Our iron ores for machinery, and coals for power, are equal in quality and greater in quantity than those of England or of Bel- gium, and at one-fifth their cost in labor. Cotton is within two days' journey -subsistence is found in the utmost profusion around us. Our great natural and ever open highways afford ns the cheapest possible facilities of intercom- munication. Our climate is most favorable to life and to labor. Our taxes are lighter, by far, than those of any other people. We have, and our position will always secure to us, the greatest possible security to persons and property. We have now a population superabundant for the supply of our agricultural wants; and now. when we are fully prepared to develope our mineral and man- ufacturing resources, and to enlarge those branches of industry that have been regarded as the chief sources of wealth, and the evidences of high civilization, the newly discovered mines of guld on the shores of the Pacific, are not only providing us with the means of manufacturing action, but are opening nearer channels of communication between ourselves and people of other countries, climates and products, and with whom we should naturally make exchanges.
Other reasons why we may expect a rapid growth are given in a re- cent petition to the executive and legislature of Indiana, for an appro- priation for a geological survey of that State.
During the last ten years, the business of manufacturing has been very wide- ly extended, and improvements in machinery in the use and economy of pow- er, have somewhat changed the position of the elements which gave England and Belginm and New England their superiority. The changes in the channels of commerce which have already occurred and are now clearly foreseen, are also resulting in the change of position of the manufacturers who chiefly support and employ that commerce. The vast multiplication of scientific books and journals has resulted in advising manufacturers not only of the best machinery used in their particular departments, but of the relative advantages of different sites for operating that machinery.
The statistics of producing the material, of working up the material, and of moving the material and its product from the producer to the consumer. are now gathered from every source, combined with care and then rapidly spread through the workshops of the world.
The art of working in metals and in fibrous materials, was once a mystery, and they who possessed it cared but little for the cost of transportation, or the bur- then of taxation, for they had a monopoly, and measured the value of their work by the ability and necessities of their customers. But now there are few
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anch mysteries. The inventor of a labor-saving machine is neither imprisoned nor bought. In the proportion of its efficiency is the extent of his travel and the number of his advertisements.
As a consequent of these changes, the manufacturers of the world and they who would put capital and labor in mannfactures, are now eagerly looking abroad to ascertain where the natural advantages are the greatest for carrying on their respective operations; everything is taken into view; everything has its rel- ative weight, valne, and importance stamped upon it. The sum total of the va . rions items fixes the locality.
There is another element now in operation, in continental Europe, and not the least potent in the manufacturing districts, which is swelling the tide of emi- gration to this country. In France, Germany, Prussia, Saxony, Silesia, and Switzerland, where there are many thousands of people and many millions of capital employed in supplying the markets of America; political revolutions have rendered investments in macinery nnsafe, and have increased the burtheny on the energies and success of the manufacturers. These people are now look- ing for more quiet homes, cheaper lands, and lighter taxes.
'To these classes of manufacturers, the holders of our food, our minerals, and our fibrons staples should show points of refuge, safety, and profit. We, who desire to bring the consumers of what we have to sell to come near to us, have every interest in showing these consumers the goodness and the value of what we have to sell. We have land, coal, iion, and lead ores, the earths employed in the arts and mannfactures-the cotton, hemp, and wool, each and all far cheap- er and of a quality equally good with what they obtain where they now are-but they do not know these facts, and they cannot be expected to credit the state- ments of individuals who have their own purposes to subserve. The State must furnish the official vouchers and endorsements.
'The effect which the establishment of extensive manufactures in one part of the State would have upon the agricultural interests of the other sections of the State are obvious The counties of the State, now wholly agricultural, would soon diversify their pursuits. The eastern ontcropping of the coal field extends one hundred and fifty miles from the Ohio, to the northwestern boundery of the State. Railroads will soon cross this margin at varions points, and connect the mineral with the agricultural districts. These roads will place the coal on the eastern limits of the State at prices lower than the average rates of an equivalent coal in the manufacturing districts of Europe. The iron ore may pass through the furnace, and perhaps through the rolling mill, near its native bed, but it will then be taken where subsistence is the cheapest, and the last processes of its man- ufacture will require far more hands and capital than the first.
Within the last year this subject has engaged the serious attention of the Eastern Press, and the following extract from the New York Dry Goods Reporter, expresses the general opinion of that Press:
We are pleased to see such an interest awakened at the South and West, in regard to manufactures. From an inspection of the valley of the Missis- sippi last year, we became convinced that the day was not far distant when neither the Southern nor Western States would be dependent upon the East for the products of the loom. It is clear to our mind, that this portion of the United States is destined to be the battle ground on which the control of the non-producing markets of the world is to be decided. The inexhausti- ble beds of bituminous coal which run parallel with and contiguous to the great Father of Waters, will supply the cheapest motive power in the world, while they will have for a market, not only all the States that lie contignons, but they are nearer to the markets of all Mexico. If the Atlantic and Pacif- ic Railraad is ever made, it will debouche somewhere near New Orleans, and this region will, in this matter, again have the advantage of the rest of the world .- D. G. R., Jan. 20, 1849.
Many quotations, like the above, might be given. Indeed, the saga- cious statesmen and manufacturers of the East seem to appreciate our advantages far more highly than we do.
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The foreign demand for the coal of the Lower Ohio is forcibly set forth in the following letter of Mr. Maury, whose position and means of information entitle his opinions to great weight.
Extract from a recent letter from Lieut. Maury to R. Triplett, of Bon-Harbor, Ky.
"Go ask the railroads, canals, and the whole network of internal improve ments that are stretching themselves out from the four quarters to reach the Ohio, and through it the great stream of the West: from North, South, East, and West, they will point you there, and with an eloquence, though mute, yet far more significant than words can ever do, they will tell of the inducements that the mining and manufacturing facilities there presented, hold out to the in- vestment of capital.
"Ask the capitalists and statesmen of Pennsylvania and Maryland; of Vir- ginia; the two Carolinas, Florida, and Alabamba; of Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, and the tier of Ohio States, why are they investing more than their one hundred million of dollars in works of internal improvement to and fro, and through the valley of that river ? and they will tell yon it is because of its immense resources in all the elements of wealth-its fertile soil -- its thriving population-its water power-its coal measures-its hills of iron, and fine cli- mate-all combined, have drawn either a railroad or canal almost from every State in the Union, towards that region, so attractive is it.
"The natural highway of down stream navigation from you to the Gulf, and thence with the Gulf stream to the long range of Atlantic States, was not, in the eyes of business men, sufficient; other market ways and commercial chan- nels to and from your favored region of country were wanted, and we have actually seen sovereign States contending and striving with each other in opening these ways.
"The uew channels for business and commerce already under way or com- pleted to the Ohio river, from the Lakes, the Atlantic and the Gulf, are monu- ments of the commercial power and greatness which slumber with you. * *
"New Mexico, Deseret, and all the embryo States between you and the Rocky Mountains, will be as dependent on your workshops for the next gen- eration, as you for the last have been upon those of New and old England.
"The railroad to California, taking the Southern route, will open to you the markets of interior Arkansas and Northern Texas. Running along the fron- tiers of Mexico for hundreds of miles, it will give you a monopoly in trade with the three or four millions of Mexicans who will have nothing to give you in exchange for your merchandise but silver and gold, and the produce of their mines-the very articles that you most desire.
"Within the last year the workshops of New England have thrown into Mexico from the right bank of the Rio Grande, about four millions of merchan- dise, whereas, before the navigation of that river was opened, New England scarce sent as many thousands there.
"The California railroad will open to you a richer and better country by far, thau that along the banks of the Rio Grande.
"Before the conquest of California, the inland trade with Santa Fe amonnt- ed to some three or four millions annually, despite drawbacks and the Mexican tariff. What will that amount to now, with increased population, increased facilities of communication and free trade?
"That of itself is a prize for which the Western States may well afford to enter the manufacturing list, that they may contend for it. * * *
"Then as for your coal mines, a new market of boundless extent is also just about to be opened for that article. The coal measures of the West may mo- nopolize that market.
"The Pacific ocean from California to Chili is the smoothest sea in the world. It is admirably adapted for steam navigation, as is the Mississippi river itself; and yet, all the way along that coast, from the Columbia river to Cape Horn, there is not a single coal measure from which the steamers there can be supplied.
"The Pacific steamers have to have their coal sent to them all the way round
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Cape Horn, at the cost for freight alone of some $20 or $25 the ton. Our mail steamers in the Pacific have been paying as high as $40 the ton for coal.
"The Panama railway will put an end to this, and bring that market to your very doors.
"The fleet of staamers already in the Pacific and preparing to go there, will require about 100,000 tous af coal this year. By the time the Panama railway is completed, and you get your coal mines fairly developed. the demand for coal there will be largely increased, reaching in a few years a million of tons annually. Panama is midway the coast and therefore in the very position for the coal deposite of that ocean. None of the mines that are washed by it can interfere with you, because from Borneo, Formosa, China, and Japan, which abound in coal, America is up stream or to windward.
"Having the coal on the banks of the river you will be enabled to deliver it in any quantities at Chagres cheaper than it can be brought from the moun- tains of Pennsylvania, and sent down by sea to the same place. To get that coal of Pensylvania to market, it has to pay tolls both to railroads and canals, which together with the expense of the inland freight nearly or quite equals the cost of mining.
"You have the broad Mississippi and beautiful Ohio without toll gates or weigh-locks at your free use, for everything you choose to place upon their bosoms for market.
"With these facilities you will be enabled to deliver in Chagres coal for the Pacific steamers at $4 or $5 per ton. perhaps less. For a dollar or two more the railroad will deliver it the other side on the shores of the Pacific, and thus the steamers there, instead of paying $30 or $40 for coal, will get it at $6 or $7, and that will tend greatly to increase the number of steamers there, and to swell the demands for the produce of your labor.
"You observe, therefore, how propitious are the times : these improvements to the Pacific are badding forth just about the time that your mines are ready to open, and when you are showing the first blossoms of your manufacturing powers, facilities and capacities. What a rich promise of early fruit do they not hold out to you.
"Commence now and drive ahead-for these markets will expand as fast as it will be possible for you to enlarge your capacity to supply them. Not over- bold is the prophecy that in ten years from this time there will be annually deliv- ered across the Isthmus for consumption in the Pacific, not less than one mil- lion of tons of coal from the West. This is only one item of the many among you, which are not known in your foreign commerce.
REPORTS OF GEOLOGISTS AND ENGINEERS IN REFERENCE TO THE MIN- ERALS, EARTHS AND POSITION OF CANNELTON.
Louisville, Nov. 20, 1847.
To Prof. SILLIMAN, New Haven, Ct .:
An accidental meeting with yon, some years ago, among the lead mines of Missouri, hardly entitles me to claim a personal acquaintance with yon, but to yon whose life has been spent in the pursuit of useful knowledge, I am sure I need offer no apology for the request I am about to make, for I am persuaded it will give you pleasure to spread as widely as possible, a knowledge of those vast and valuable resources with which a bountiful Providence has blessed our coun- try. Nor can I expect to communicate anything which may be entirely un- known to you; but to a numerous class of the readers of your Journal, the in- formation I send may be, if not entirely new, of sufficient interest to engage their at ention
I have just returned from an excursion to a part of the great coal field which lies between the Falls of the Ohio and the Mississippi river. That part of this magnificent coal basin to which my attention has just now been particularly di- rected. possesses, I think, unusual interest, not only to the geologist. but to the practical miner, and I now propose to present your readers a description of it, not only as a contribution to science, but in the hope that it may attract the at-
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tention of some who are seeking new objects in which profitably to invest their capital. Generous as nature has been in giving us a genial climate and produc- tive soil, with navigable rivers that traverse every portion of this immense val- ley, I donbt whether in our own, or in any other land, there can be found any- thing surpassing in richness and extent its mineral resources. My object now is, however, to invite attention to a single item in this great arcana of wealth, not doubting that, at some distant day, when the mineral capacities of this coun- try shall be fully revealed, our present knowledge will be but as a grain of sand upon the sea shore, in comparison to that which time and science and the em- ployment of labor and capital will unfold.
The whole coal field, of which the point I refer to forms a part, occupies a por- tion of five States, extending from near Bowling Green, Kentucky, 10 the mouth of Rock river, Illinois, and from St. Louis, Missouri, to near Bloomington, Iowa, being about five hundred miles in length and about two hundred wide, containing about seventy thousand square miles, and embracing an area greater than the whole State of Illinois. It is not very likely, however, that any consid- erable part of this vast body of coal will be of any practical value to the present generation, but there it will lie, where a wise Providence has placed it, for the use of those who come after ns; a fund of future wealth which no man at this day can venture to estimate. To the practical miner of the present time, the important enquiry is, where, in this extended field, is the greatest combination of favorable circumstances for the employment of labor and capital in mining coal?
The discoveries in science and " the improvement in machinery made during the last ten or twelve years, by which steam is used for ocean as well as lake and river navigation, and by which, on the score of economy as well as convenience, t is superceding water as a moving power in our mannfactories, renders this question of the supply of coal, one of increasing and great import. Without coal, the stately ocean steamer which now heeds "nor winds nor waves," would lie powerless and lifeless npon the sea, and equally indispensable is it, as the agent which gives. motion to the machinery of our great cotton and rolling mills, to say nothing of its increased use for fuel and light in our large towns and cities.
Feeling that this subject is every day acquiring more importance, I have spent much time in the study of this great coal field, and I shall confine the rest of my remarks to that portion of it, which, in my opinion, offers superior advantages in respect not only to the quality of the coal, but to the ease with which it can be obtained, and the facility and cheapness with which it can be furnished for the purposes to which I have referred.
The point to which I allude is Cannelton and its vicinity, situated on the north bank of the Ohio river, in Perry county, Indiana. The undoubted health, as well as the beauty of this location-the abundance and excellent quality of the coal-its commanding positionon the lower Ohioi where navigation is neither in nterrupted by ice and low water, renders it a point of nncommon interest. The business of mining coal is becoming important, and whether viewed as a depot for the supply of fuel for navigation or domestic purposes, or as a future manu- facturing city, of which, I trust, there will be more than one within the circle of this great coal basin, it is looked upon by men of forecast as a place of much fu- ture consequence.
In order to give a definite idea of the exact position of the coal and of the method of mining it, I give the following drawing, embracing a distance of five miles along the Ohio river.
No. 11.
No. 10.
No. 9.
No. 7.
Vo 6.
No. 5.
.No. 4.
No. 3.
No. 2.
No. 1.
Bed of the Ohio River.
It will be seen by the above drawing that the strata all dip or incline to the west, the amount of which, at this place, is about fifty feet to the mile; conse-
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qntently, the main bed of coal, which is represented on the right, as two hundred feet above the river level, is nearly down to its bed on the left. The following is a description of the strata represented in the section:
No. 1. Is a bed of green argillaceous shale, or. perhaps, it might as well be terined slaty clay, containing occasional thin layers of argillaceons iron ore. It is destitute of fossils. Its thickness at this place is abont eighty feet, as seen high- er up the river. When acted on by air and moisture, it becomes very soft, and thereby looses its power of sustaining the super-inenmbent rocks. lesis this which causes the exceeding steepness of the hill in the upper part of this see- tion and for several miles above.
No. 2. Is limestone about twenty feet thick, and filled with small organie re- mains, the most interesting of which I noticed were terebratular.
No. 3. Is a true conglomerate of mill-stone grit, consisting almost entirely of quartz gravel and coarse sand, without any visible cement. It is an excellent material for furnace hearths and fire-stones; and likewise for mill-stones, where the grains adhere sufficiently together. Doubtless it would be found to be depos itory of salt water where the dip has carried it sufficiently below the fresh water level, as it is evident that all the valuable brine found in the western States, is de rived from roeks of this sort. It has a double stratification, as represented in the drawing, showing conclusively, that there were strong currents in the ocean where it was deposited The same kind of stratification is seen in great abundance along the Mississippi river at low water and sometimes on the Ohio. The sand- hars which occasion so much trouble to boatmen, are generally prodneed in this way, being a kind of terrace formed by the water upon which the sand is rolled by the current, till it comes to the edge where it rolls down by its own. weight into deeper water and stops. In this way the bars are continually extending themselves downwards, unless arrested or ent off by some counter-currents. Its thickness is abont thirty-six feet.
No. 3. Is a fine grained sand-stone of remarkable uniformity of texture, and in the size of its particles. This shows that it was deposited in a quiet ocean, whose waters Howed gently but steadily onward. It has a single stratifieation which causes it to split readily into square blooeks.
When first quarried it is very soft and easily worked, but it soon hardens on ex- posure to the weather, which renders it an excellent and valuable building mate- rial. It is extensively quarried and boated down the river for the government works at Memphis. The thickness of this bed is about thirty feet. There is generally a thin bed of shale between this and the conglomerate, but it never ex- ceeds a very few feet, and is sometimes altogether wanting .*
No. 5. Lies immediately upon No. 4. withont the intervention of any shale, and is almost destitute of stratification, especially in its central position. It con- sists of a confused mixture of sand, shaly matter andiron ore. It abonnds in or- ganie remains, chiefly calamites, which shews its proximity to coal. It is about fifty feet thick.
No. 6. Is argillaceous shale, including one of the most valuable beds of coal found anywhere in our country. The whole varies in thickness from about twenty to thirty feet. The upper and lower portions are generally light colored but grow darker towards the centre, until it becomes perfectly black in the middle. On the darkest portions of the shale lies the bed of coal, the thickness of which varies from three to four feet, but sometimes it increases to nearly five feet. But it is not its thickness which particularly recommends it to notice, it is its excellent quality, the freedom of the mines from water and its nearness to the river. It is estimated that a eubic foot of coal in the mine is equivalent to one bushel in weight. There are 43,560 square feet in an acre; consequently there will be as many times that number of bushels as there are feet in thickness in the bed. It leaves no einder in the grate, and leaves only 2.11 per cent. of white ashes. It resembles in appearance, and burns like the cannel coal, and it has been so call-
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