USA > New York > New York : the planting and the growth of the Empire state, Vol. II > Part 20
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MASTER IN MANUFACTURES.
The consequence is, that manufactures are confined to no locality, but are scattered over all the counties. New York city stands first in the country in the value of its annual production and probably first in the world. Twelve of the hundred cities of the Union most largely en- gaged in manufactures, are in this State. Along the lakes and the St. Lawrence, and from the Niagara River along the southern tier, as well as in the central counties and the valley of the Hudson and in the vicinity of the metropolis, the skill and energy of the people are employed in shop and mill. In value of annual products the commonwealth is first in the aggregate, but in the chief industries first only in chemicals, in ship-building, in flouring and grist mills, in hosiery and knit goods, and in slaughtering and packing of beeves. The features of manufac- tures in New York are the number of establish- ments, which were 42,739 in 1879, and still more the wide diversity of production. This diversity permits free exchange in the local markets, while it prevents the disasters which come from exclusive reliance on a single pro- duct, and affords occupation for persons of dif- ferent capacities, inclinations and acquirements.
While New York city stands in some respects apart from the rural districts, as one of the money centers of the world, and by reason of its
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devotion to domestic and foreign commerce, it is yet occupied in many of the same branches of production, and concentrates many of the in- dustrial features of the commonwealth. That city manufactures annually more men's cloth- ing than anything else, exceeding §60,000,000 worth. Its second industry is slaughtering and meat-packing, not including the retail butchers, at 829,297,527. Third in value are malt and malt liquors, $25,000,000. Then follow tobacco and cigars, exceeding 822,000,000. The vast work of its printers and publishers is only fourth in rank, at 821.696,354, and women's clothing is reported at $18,930,553. Only four other manufactures produce over $10,000,000 a year, and these are foundries and machine work, lard, sugar and molasses, and furniture and up- holstering. Other branches in the order of their annual values, are boots and shoes, silks, musi- cal instruments, grease and tallow, flour and grist, shirts. coffee and spices, and jewelry. The wealth of the city's industries is derived in largest measure from multifarious branches, serving the uses of the individual and the fam- ily, for convenience and for luxury. The ratio of values of annual manufactures to population is greater in New York city than in New Eng- land as a whole, about equal to that in Massa- chusetts, but less than Rhode Island, and a trifle
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MASTER IN MANUFACTURES.
less than in Philadelphia. Adding commerce and professional services, the comparison is in all cases in favor of New York city.
Local conditions direct the industry in sev- eral of the rural counties, so that Onondaga is noted for its salt, while Oneida, Herkimer, St. Lawrence, Delaware, and Cattaraugus send most butter and cheese to market from their factories. Early enterprise and devotion to a particular branch have secured control, so that the little county of Fulton sells nearly $5.000,- 000 worth a year of gloves and mittens, Rens- selaer $6,000,000 of shirts and men's furnish- ing goods, while Saratoga and Jefferson make paper a specialty, and Dutchess, woolen hats. Westchester in like manner gives much atten- tion to carpets, and Erie produces over $3.000,- 000 a year in glucose. Cattaraugus leads in lumber and in leather, with Lewis. Oswego, and Chemung close competitors in the latter, and Kings is first in the value of its dressed skins.
While forty counties are more or less engaged in making agricultural implements, Cayuga leads in annual sales, closely followed by Rons- selaer. Kings county produces from its foun- dries and machine shops nearly twice as much in value as any other county after New York, while Erie, Rensselaer, and Albany follow in order. Rensselaer is by far the greatest pro-
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ducer of iron and steel, reaching in annual value $8,702,189, while Dutchess, Onondaga, Clinton, and Albany exceed $1,000,000, respectively, and Oneida approximates that sum. Flouring and grist mills are maintained in all parts of the State, but their products exceed $3,344,000 in two counties only, Erie and Monroe, although Kings, Oswego and Niagara each turns out more than 82,500,000 annually in these industries.
· In textile fabrics, cotton, woolen and mixed, Albany is the chief producer, Oneida second, and Columbia third. Monroe leads in quantity of boots and shoes, Albany follows second, with Westchester third. and Oneida fourth. The manufacture of men's clothing is widely dis- tributed, but Monroe produces after New York the most in value, $4,412,000, leading its near- est competitor, Kings, by 81,273,238, while Onondaga, Erie, and Oneida are next, respec- tively, in annual output. Kings county is the chief brewer, turning out annually over $5,000,- 000 worth of malt and malt liquors ; Albany is second, with over 84.000.000; and Erie and Monroe are next in order. Kings county is also engaged more largely than any other county except New York in drugs and chemicals, paints and varnish.
The commonwealth in 1850 produced about one-fourth in value of all the manufactures of
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MASTER IN MANUFACTURES.
the Union ; and in 1860, and since that period, has held steadily to about one-fifth, notwith- standing the marvelous extension of population and of industries in the new States and terri- tories. The statistics are thus verified by re- peated experience, and the results are shown to be due to no feverish excitement, but to the normal and persistent habits of the people.
This diversity and extent of manufactures, combined with agriculture, with trade in all its branches, with financial activity, with steady thrift, mark the industrial character of the com- monwealth. While specialties are fostered in a few communities, the State as a whole pro- duces almost every article needed by a civilized community ; and while it receives all kinds of imports from foreign lands and seeks to return its share of merchandise to foreign markets, it finds its best consumers on its own soil, adja- cent to its own farms and dairies, and near the doors of its own factories.
This industrial completeness is the result of a symmetrical and natural development. Driven, like other colonies, by British restrictions to agriculture and its specialty, the fur trade, the commonwealth engaged in manufactures when it cast off its colonial shackles, and its leading citizens were the first in enterprises for develop- ing the gifts of nature and for making full use of
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its water power. They were apt to take advan- tage of changes in external relations as well as in national legislation. Many of them were in the early days large land-owners, and they planted shops and mills to draw in population and to add profit to agriculture. When, in later years, capital has sought investment, it has studied the demands of mankind as well as the apparent currents of trade, and has pro- vided for the homes, the apparel, the needs, the luxuries, the tastes, and the intellect of its people. Vast as is the volume of the manufac- tures of the State, the security for prosperity, the promises of progress, the guaranty against overwhelming disaster, is even more in the rich variety, the marvelous diversity of the articles which skill and taste and enterprise contribute constantly to the comfort, as well as to the wealth of the individual and of society.
CHAPTER XLI.
THE PRIMACY OF NEW YORK.
THE population of New York, which was 4,382,759 in 1870, grew to 5,082,871 in 1880, and although no census was taken in 1885, was not less than 6,000,000 in that year. Of the nations of the world only fourteen have more inhabitants than this commonwealth, while twenty-two accounted considerable have a less population. England, up to the middle of the eighteenth century, boasted no larger number of people.
For its geographical relations as well as for the battles fought on its soil, New York is in many respects the Belgium of America. The Flemish kingdom is the connecting link be- tween Germany and France on the one hand, and the British Isles on the other, just as the Empire State holds New England in close rela- tions with the South and the West. The pop- ulation of Belgium and New York is about equal, the American commonwealth having rap- idly gained on the workshop and hive of Eu-
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rope. Belgium has the larger aggregate wealth, probably nearly double. although the compar- ison of statistics is difficult, on account of the different processes pursued in gathering them. In its agriculture New York is the larger pro- ducer, as its greater extent and fresher soil make it easy for it to be. In manufactures, also, New York is far in advance of Belgium in its annual production. "Mulhall's Balance Sheet" places the manufactures of the latter country at $425,000,000 in 1878, or about forty- two per cent. of the value of those of New York in 1879. The figures for New York are the careful compilations of the national census. The Belgian column is confirmed by estimates based on the exports and the ability of the inhabitants for consumption. The American commonwealth is far from the maximum of its production or of the ratio of its development. The share of the production that goes to those that toil with their hands is at least twice as large in New York as in Belgium.
Since 1820 the commonwealth has held the first rank in the Union in number of inhabi- tants. Then they were almost exactly one- seventh of the total of the Union, while in 1880 they were one-tenth. In that year its valua- tion was one-seventh of that of the entire coun- try, almost exactly equal to that of all of New
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THE PRIMACY OF NEW YORK.
England, but that was a matter of fortune for which no credit can be claimed. Credit should be allowed for its industry as proved by a share of one-fifth in the total manufactured products of the year, at the same time that its share in agricultural production was nearly one-twelfth, measured by value.
These plain figures prove that never have so many inhabitants been gathered in an equal period on 47,620 square miles elsewhere on earth ; and a population of six millions has no- where else developed a wider, more diversified, and more productive industry. These are ma- terial results that can be tested and compared. They illustrate and are the fruits of the institu- tions and the people.
No single industry is unduly dominant, be- cause the inhabitants constitute a society so di- verse, while so harmonious. The cosmopolitan population finds expression in various occupa- tions, and as it makes nearly everything that mechanism has devised or civilization calls for. it is in itself a union of nearly all the strains of blood and character that enter into the human race. Thus the history of the commonwealth is not a rippling stream flowing from a single source to one debouchure. It is rather the growth of a monarch of the forest. to which the chemistry of all rays and all winds contribute,
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NEW YORK.
which thrusts its roots downwards and pushes its branches outwards and upwards, and strug- gles with storm and lightning. He who counts the rings upon its trunk, who measures its in- creasing stature, who rests beneath its shade, does not explain the mysteries of its develop- ment ; but he can point to all men that such is the soil, such have been the blasts of the north- wind and such the placid warmths of summer, such the storms and such the scathing lightning strokes which threatened death. Because its roots grew deep and broad, because it drew life from scores of sources and was dependent on all the gifts of nature, and not on one or few, it has become strong and it is full of health and vigor, and despair itself cannot fail to behold its majestic greatness. New York might lose any one of the branches of its industry, and yet not be crippled ; it might lose many, and bind up its wounds for fresh efforts. The di- verse currents that have run into its population, perhaps no longer give it a distinct and almost unique character, such as it showed in the era up to the Revolution, but they have produced a mosaic that, first exhibited in full degree in this commonwealth, is now everywhere recognized as American.
New York never enjoyed the quiet and the repose of Arcadia. The charming creation of
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THE PRIMACY OF NEW YORK.
Rip Van Winkle is a portrait by contrast. Labor has kept romance in check. By the rhythm of the factory and the foundry the movements of life have been marked. The rush of production and of traffic has made changes rapid, continuous, pronounced. Even Diedrich Knickerbocker would not present a phlegmatic Dutchman as the typical New Yorker of to-day. In Wall street he is the most excitable and most audacious of specula- tors. In Fifth avenue he is the most courtly and self-contained of citizens. A merchant in Broadway, he is a mechanic in avenue A. In Troy he is the swarthy, muscular iron-worker. In Oneida county he is the thrifty, prudent dairyman or the skillful operative. On the Sauquoit and the lower falls of the Mohawk, his cottons excel those of Lancashire. In the valley of the Genesee he plants his gardens and fosters his orchards in the shadow of his mills. Beside the interior lakes, his vineyards rival those of the slopes of the Alps. On the Oswego and in Cattaraugus he cuts his lumber and tans his leather. The air is black on the shores of Lake Erie with the smoke of his foundries. Versatile in his work, the summer finds him in study or convention on Chautauqua Lake, or mingling religion with amusement amid the myriad isles of the St. Lawrence, or courting
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NEW YORK.
fashion at Saratoga or Richfield, or hunting for health and fish in the northern wilderness, or gaining inspiration from the mountains in the Adirondacks, the Catskills, or the Shawangunk, or resting in quiet beside Lake George or Seneca or the many limpid rivers which he loves to trace to their sources, or mingling with the surging multitudes on the islands and the beaches where the sea bounds the beautiful bay of which he boasts. Neither Puritan nor Cava- lier, he deems nothing that touches humanity alien to him. His charities are munificent. If the State invests in its charitable institutions $49,000,000, private beneficence duplicates the liberality, and adds to outlays of money the more precious gifts of personal sympathy and unwearying care.
He adopts all the amusements from all other nations, and devises others to supplement them. He opens six average farms to give the metro- polis Central Park. He establishes a State re- servation in the Adirondacks, and buys Niagara Falls for a pleasure resort for the people. He builds costly churches and museums, and founds art galleries and libraries, and opens broad and attractive avenues, and yet often neglects the simple duties of the citizen, until gross wrongs stir him to a wrath that secures justice. Busy, enterprising, thrifty, he contributes much more
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THE PRIMACY OF NEW YORK.
than his share to the world's commodities; and yet without stinginess, with a love of sunshine and a solid trust in the future, he consumes also more than his neighbors, and much more than his cousins in the Old World.
In a philosophical disquisition such as made his private conversation often more attractive and brilliant than his public addresses, William H. Seward once said that New York is so great a State that each of its parties is divided into conservatives and radicals, and so rivalries are engendered that cause contests in conventions and interfere with the promotion of its states- men in national politics. While the explana- tion fitted the era in which he was a leader. it does not cover the period when this common- wealth was only fifth in rank, in 1790, when George Clinton who had opposed the constitu- tion was the rival of Jay ; nor does it satisfy in- quiries into the obstacles placed, about loin1. when the rank of New York was third. in the way of Hamilton as well as of Burr; nor show why Tompkins and De Witt Clinton between 1810 and 1820, when the commonwealth was rising from the second rank in population to the first, found home opposition fatal to their ambitions. The statesmen of New York have not been inferior to those of other parts of the Union, some in aggressive criticism, some in
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constructive genius, some in the details of state- craft and party management. At all periods there have been not one merely, but two or three or several, challenging the favor of their party and the people. New York has had groups of statesmen like those who from 1844 forward adorned its annals, when Martin Van Buren and Silas Wright and William L. Marcy and Daniel S. Diekinson divided the democrats, and William H. Seward and Millard Fillmore and their associates represented the contro- versies and rivalries among the whigs.
The intellectual as well as the political move- ment has had a breadth. a popular inclusiveness, which has possibly interfered with the domina- tion of individuals. As the population has been gathered from all races, potential leaders have arisen in various quarters. If anywhere in the United States the assumption of Anglo- Saxon control is historically justifiable, here the Teutons, the Celts, the Latins, contradict it in the seats of the Hollanders and the Palatines, the Huguenots, the Irish and the Welsh, and the later Italian comers. Great names New York has given to politics, to literature, to the church, to education. It has given still more a people generally trained, a high level of popular intelligence and industry and discipline and action. The long trials of the French wars and
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THE PRIMACY OF NEW YORK.
the Revolution created a State enured to hard- ship, apt in emergency, confident in its future. The second war with Great Britain trained the sons in the virtues of the fathers. The genera- tion which constructed the Erie Canal, owed much to a few brave spirits, but more to the faith and the sacrifice and persistence of the majority. The diversity of industry testifies to the tendency to separate and independent action, to the refusal to run in single tracks, to the purpose to work out each in his own way the results best for the individual and the com- monwealth.
Such qualities have made New York hospi- table to every new thought and idea and inven- tion, while there has been maintained a sturdy substratum of conservatism. It welcomed under the rule of Holland the dissentients from New England; and if for a while it yielded to the anti-Catholic frenzy of the contest with James Stuart, it yet in the main illustrated always a generous toleration. The attempt of the Ens- lish governors to connect church and state, gave energy to the movement for popular rights and finally for independence. Every voice crying in the wilderness has found here willing listen- ers. The claims of advanced thinkers have been nowhere more promptly challenged. Vis- itors from the Old World, whether missionaries,
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NEW YORK.
or critics of our society and politics, or literary guests intent on pleasure and on profit, are re- ceived often with exuberant courtesy to be fol- lowed by searching criticism. Science makes no offers which are not greedily accepted. An interior city of New York by organizing the first magnetic telegraph company in the world, exhibited the expectant attitude of the enter- prise of the commonwealth, which has been rep- resented in ventures on every sea and in every land, while it has laid deep and broad the corner stones of domestic prosperity.
New York has never had a single leader, but it has recognized the leadership of the many. Its prosperity is in its agriculture and its multi- form industry, the prosperity of the many. It has not on its own soil developed so rich and wide and high an education as New England bas attained, but it has striven liberally and persistently for the education of the many, and at last is providing by private munificence for the most advanced students.
Except for dates and convenience of group- ing, events in New York do not depend upon presidents or governors or leaders. Hamilton was our greatest statesman, but even he does not mark an era. Martin Van Buren was chosen to the presidency, but in his own party and in State and national polities, the influence
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THE PRIMACY OF NEW YORK.
of Silas Wright was in most respects at least equal and in some points greater and more en- during. William H. Seward was beyond most men a statesman of forethought and power ; he did not overshadow his contemporaries in New York. From the coming of Champlain on the lake which bears his name, and of Hudson on the river which tells his story, our waterways have been factors in our life and progress. The Erie Canal following the lines of Indian ex- cursions, is the central channel of our rapid and extensive growth, and later facilities for com- munication have strengthened the grasp of New York on the commerce of the continent.
By its position and by its relations hardly more than by its sentiment and its patriotism, New York has been an integer in the nation, rather than a State disposed to assert sover- eignty. In the amendments which it insisted should be a part of the national constitution, the rights of the citizen are guaranteed before any reservation is made in behalf of the States. Complaint has sometimes arisen that sufficient attention has not been given by its own people to the history, to the services. to the greatness of the commonwealth. They have been living in the present and looking to the future, rather than the past, and been content to hold the first place in the sisterhood of equal States. Its
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rivers and its mountains bind it to the republic, and the convictions as well as the interests and the pride of New York reach out over every part of the united nation.
Wouter van Twiller and Peter Stuyvesant would be strange visitors if they stood on the East River bridge, when the throngs go to their business in the morning or return to their homes in the evening, or gather to celebrate a public festivity. They would see amid the spires and towers and palatial structures, the homes of a population greater than that of all Holland in their day, and the seat of their executive author- ity grown so as to dwarf Amsterdam to a village, and to contain a number of inhabitants nearly threefold that they were familiar with in Lon- don. Trains running in the air, voices com- municating over miles of space and matter and hurly-burly, might well surprise them, less than the harvest of architecture and wealth, the busy multitudes engaged in vocations novel and wonderfully productive. the steady movement of the web and woof of trade and travel, the confidence and spirit of a free and intelligent and prosperous people. For these throngs are only a part of the commonwealth that has grown from the province over which they ruled - a commonwealth with a population one - half greater than that of the Netherlands to-day,
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THE PRIMACY OF NEW YORK.
and with a strength and solidity that rest on the old Dutch foundations.
In the century and a half past, the tender plant which those old governors nursed so care- fully, has grown to such proportions. Even their Dutch phlegm might gather inspiration from the scene, and their peering eyes might scan the future, and behold all possibilities inviting six million people with opportunities so multi- plied, with possessions so abundant, on a do- main so imperial, with civilization casting its gifts at their feet. They might gather cheer too from the record that the ancestors and pre- decessors of these millions in the main met the tasks and duties of their position with prudence, courage, forethought, and devotion to worthy ideals and purposes. They might weigh the character of the people who have made the commonwealth what it is, and discern in it the combination of elements, the resultant of di- vergent forces, the equipoise that comes from motion and genuine life, and thus from their elevation over the surging tides of the New World's metropolis, take heart of hope that the generations and the centuries to come will add to the development of the Empire State in all that constitutes the glory of a free common- wealth.
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741
INDEX.
[Pages preceding 359 will be found in Volume I. ; those subsequent to 359 will be found in Volume II. ]
ABERCROMBIE, General. 325 ; neglects precautions, 330 ; is defeated on Lake George, 331.
Acadia, expedition against, 101.
Agriculture, products of Indians in, 21, 22; of the colonists, 46: scat- tered. 51 : extended. 54 ; prosper- ing, 95: after the Revolution, 456; before the war of 1812, 505 ; in 1880, 631.
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