Confederate Victory: When does the Confederacy become a pariah state?

[jmc247]

On the issue of slavery and industrialization Tredegar Iron Works before the war used slaves mainly to fill out no skill or low skill jobs. They would have been a profitable venture been without the use of slaves, but they let them pad their margins a bit.

The percentage of enslaved workers at Tredegar Iron Works rose from 10% before the war to almost 50% during the war as white men were drafted into service. By November of 1864, 200 enslaved people worked at the Tredegar site and several hundred more worked in the furnaces outside of the city.

Tredegar Iron Works: Industrial Slavery - American Civil War Museum

Historical Context The Tredegar Iron Works was established in Richmond, Virginia in 1837 by Francis Brown Deane Jr., and later bought by …

acwm.org

So how willing would they have been to go back to being fully free labor which they were for a time? I suspect it’s a simple calculation for the owners of the padded margins vs what the level of pressure placed on them was.

 

[NedStark]

Once again, this is an assumption people make with nothing behind it. Slave industries in the South were at least as profitable as northern industry. Slaves are compatible with industry.

In newer industries with more sophiscated skill/technological requirements, free labor would be required.

 

[wcv215]

In newer industries with more sophiscated skill/technological requirements, free labor would be required.

Not really. Slaves could do such jobs, and could be coerced more effectively than free labor, as well as requiring either as much, or sometimes less, education to do the jobs. They can be worked harder, and also offered incentives for good work, same as OTL. While sabotage and shirking would definitely (and did) happen, there isn’t much reason to think southern free labor would be much better.

 

[PGSBHurricane]

In newer industries with more sophiscated skill/technological requirements, free labor would be required.

I guess it depends on the exact job being performed. Some of them would no doubt require a degree of literacy, something which was prohibited from slaves.

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Once again, this is an assumption people make with nothing behind it. Slave industries in the South were at least as profitable as northern industry. Slaves are compatible with industry.

Slaves being compatible with the technical requirements of industry doesn't matter if nobody will buy from them.

Look, europe conquered and partitioned africa in part to stop the slave trade. Yes, Brazil got away with not banning it until 1888 but the CSA would get more scrutiny than brazil since it's a "real"(read: the right kind of white) country. There's a reason I think 1880s or 1890s are likely: sheer diplomatic pressure.

Incidently, I see a US where the ACW never happened being able to pull off keeping slavery until 1900-1920 due to being both bigger and significantly harder to bully than the CSA.

 

[wcv215]

Slaves being compatible with the technical requirements of industry doesn't matter if nobody will buy from them.

Look, europe conquered and partitioned africa in part to stop the slave trade. Yes, Brazil got away with not banning it until 1888 but the CSA would get more scrutiny than brazil since it's a "real"(read: the right kind of white) country. There's a reason I think 1880s or 1890s are likely: sheer diplomatic pressure.

Incidently, I see a US where the ACW never happened being able to pull off keeping slavery until 1900-1920 due to being both bigger and significantly harder to bully than the CSA.

Sure. I addressed this later when I mentioned it was barring foreign intervention.

My main issue is with the idea that slavery and industry are incompatible fundamentally, without basis. In part it because it allows slavery to be reframed as being bad because its economically inefficient rather than being bad because slavery is morally repugnant.

 

[brunohusker]

I think that the CSA wouldn’t be a pariah state for a while. It would be allowed to keep slavery, but I’m guessing it’s pressured to do so by about 1900 or so. While slaves could be used in manufacturing industry, I think they in agriculture you wouldn’t want slaves running expensive farm equipment and even if they are used as laborers, I feel like a white populist movement might be against slavery but also anti-African in general.

 

[SWS]

The Confederacy of 1864 is quite dramatically revolutionized vis-à-vis 1861 out of sheer necessity for the prosecution of total war with a nation materially-superior in almost every aspect. Circumstance dictated the Confederate Government's response to the ever-evolving political and military nature of the conflict. If the health of James Seddon had been more robust, I think he would have made a fine executive due to his 'clear head, strong sense, and firm character.' Industrial war production is domestically-sufficient and the cotton crop has been vastly reduced (300,000 bales recorded in comparison to 4.5 million just three years before) in favor of consumables such as corn and the sweet potato, with Georgia and Alabama containing vast quantities of these produce items. The Augusta-Macon-Columbus-Montgomery-Selma line has essentially become the South's 'industrial belt' by the close of 1863. These strategic depths, designed under the sagacity of Gorgas, could not be penetrated and sabotaged until the capture of Atlanta (quite literally the 'heart' of the Confederacy). I wonder if Tredegar can transition into steel in the ATL. The seeds for Birmingham's development have already been planted. William Gregg is also an underrated industrial figure with his model Graniteville Company in South Carolina.

I personally think the individual Southern States--under the auspices and patronal policies of statesman-like Governors such as Brown, Vance, and Allen--can thrive and experience significant economic modernization and industrial expansion, building-on their wartime progress. Virginia also possesses great potential in regards to the Richmond-Petersburg-Lynchburg triangle. The growth of Virginian industry may cause Gaspar Tochman's plans for Spotsylvania County to become a center for Polish immigrants to be a success.

The South's principal problem, despite its belated developments and improvements, is that its rail infrastructure is all but collapsed, preventing the national exploitation and maintenance of said industry and agriculture. The insufficiencies of the railroads also prevented the Confederate Army in utilizing indispensable 'interior lines'. Want of adequate transportation was a primary cause of death for the Southern war effort. Confederate nationalization and expansion of its rail system (under the competency of Frederick W. Sims) would likely be one of President Davis' primary postwar legislative concerns. Wartime experience would warrant such an act by Congress, despite certain obstinate opposition. The second issue is the severe labor shortage, rendering ironworks, textile/lumber mills, armories, saltpeter caves, factories, and other such installations undermanned and desperate for workers. European immigrants cannot be attracted until the end of the war and restoration of antebellum prosperity. Refugees in the Lower South also largely failed to adapt to new economic conditions. Impressment of Negroes, both slave and free, for military and production purposes could only go so far.

It is doubtless the Confederacy will require an extensive and massive series of physical 'Reconstruction Acts' in order to restore areas laid to waste and penury by the wanton Federal armies once they withdraw. Refugees, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, will also have to be considered. Demographic changes cannot be discounted. Much of Tennessee (partition may be possible), Mississippi, and Louisiana will require such assistance, and hopefully recover by 1880.

I think the Confederate States Navy possesses excellent potential under the direction of Secretary Mallory. He was certainly, albeit theoretically, superior to his counterpart in Gideon Welles. His flair for technology and invention may serve the state quite well in peacetime, with full access to naval yards and seaports. Commerce raiders may appear a fine investment in large numbers. His planned navy may prove decisive in a war with Spain/Latin American power-projection.

 

[Slime_blob]

I said they wouldn't get rights for generations so sure, not at all incompatible with either.

Given economics/technology the window for civil rights/dixie's modernization in the US was imo 1930-50 for the process to start. Delay it a generation for the CSA given no generous subsidies from the north.

It can be accelarated as like the Freedmen and poor whites uniting against the planter class that opress them. Due to them like keeping in them in servitude

 

[Aisha Clan-Clan]

Given tech/economic limitations the most you get from that is some of the rich landowners/politicians being black and mullato, not the south economically modernizing any earlier.

 

[SWS]

'Slave labor, therefore, must be treated historically as an institution sustained by the Constitution of the United States; the domestic trade in slaves, as a business sanctioned by that august instrument; and the foreign slave trade--to which the chief ignominy of the institution attaches--as a traffic expressly protected against the wishes of the majority of the States holding slaves. Each State was left by the Constitution with full power to dispose of the institution as it might choose, and the territory acquired as common property was open to settlement by slave-holders with their property. The African bondsman was classed as property by United States law. He was property to be acquired, held, sold, delivered on bills of sale which evidenced title. He could be bequeathed, donated, sold as part of an estate, or for debt, like any other property. The Federal and State governments derived revenue from his labor. For over a century the Southern States were encouraged to invest in him and his race as property. Not one government, European, Asian or African, declared against the enslavement of the negro by the United States; and not one State among those which had fought together to gain a common independence of England refused to enter the Union on account of the constitutional recognition and encouragement of the institution. If there be any wrong in all their action, the South was not more responsible for it than their Northern associates in what has been called the great crime of the United States.
The evils of slavery, its wrong of any character, moral or political, were the result of an international cooperative action, and of an agreement among the States of the Union, the original motive of which was the cupidity of powerful African tribes and Caucasian slave dealers with the subsequent motive of profit and loss to the buyer. Such being its historical origin, it will be seen that the subsequent effort to destroy it was not mainly moral but partisan, and that the blow which struck it down fell on the lawful holders of inherited property, and was struck by the people of the Old World and the New, whose ancestors first inflicted the great wrong against humanity.
The labor of the negro being more profitable in the mild climate, and on the more fertile and cheaper land of the South, his transference from the bleaker clime and less generous as well as higher priced soil of New England became commercially inevitable. The negro became unsalable where he was at first enslaved. He brought a good price south of 36 deg. 30', and hence by the course of interstate commerce many thousands (not all, but thousands) of this class of national property changed owners as well as States, the original masters taking the purchase money to reinvest in land, merchandise, factories, stocks and bonds or other prudent ventures, while the new master invested in the coerced labor which cut down his forests and tilled his soil, holding the laborer "bound to service" under the laws of his State made pursuant to the Constitution of the United States.
The same commercial considerations which induced the enslavement of the unfortunate African caused his sale and removal from those sections of the Union where his enslavement was found to be unprofitable and his presence at least a social inconvenience. Accordingly the steady deportation of the race southward began during the close of the eighteenth century and was accelerated through the early years of the nineteenth century. The slave market was opened in the city of Washington and other Southern cities. Traders bought in Northern markets and sold for profit in the Southern. The domestic slave trade was thus inaugurated to compete with the African slave trade then in full blast and which could not be suppressed by any Southern State until the year 1808. Now and then a Southern State endeavored to hinder the infamous traffic, but the ship owners and slave traders were shielded by the supreme law of the land. The United States government was meanwhile entitled to revenue at the rate of $10 for each imported African. All the powers of the Union were put in operation to induce the people of the Southern States to invest their capital in this species of property. From this review of the slavery evil, it appears that the States in the South cannot be charged with the responsibility of its introduction, nor for the continuance of the slave trade, nor for the extension of it by the increase of negro population in the South, nor for the agitations which on this account disturbed the harmony of the sections, nor for the bloody mode adopted for its extinction.'

This summary is derived from Gen. Clement A. Evans' twelve-volume Confederate Military History, 1899

 

[SWS]

(CONT.)

'Jefferson Davis said: "War was not necessary to the abolition of slavery. Years before the agitation began at the North and the menacing acts to the institution, there was a growing feeling all over the South for its abolition. But the abolitionists of the North, both by publications and speech, cemented the South and crushed the feeling in favor of emancipation. Slavery could have been blotted out without the sacrifice of brave men and without the strain which revolution always makes upon established forms of government. I see it stated that I uttered the sentiment, or indorsed it, that 'slavery is the corner stone of the Confederacy.' That is not my utterance." "It is not conceivable," said General Stephen D. Lee, in 1897, "that the statesmen of the Union were incompetent to dispose of slavery without war."
It will become clear to any who will conservatively reflect on the conditions existing at the beginning of the present century, that if the opposition to slavery had been firmly based on the principle that it was a violation of the first law of human brotherhood, and also on its breach of the economic principle that enforced labor should not compete with the labor of the free citizen--if the appeal for its discontinuance had been made to the public conscience and the private sense of right, and the just claims of honest free labor, the institution would have passed away in less than a generation from the date of the Declaration of Independence. Had all the New England States, with all other Northern slave-holding States, in 1776 (following the course of Massachusetts) abolished slavery without the sale of a single slave; had the slave trade been discontinued as the Southern States (except Georgia and South Carolina) desired; had the views of Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina been fostered and made effective by Northern hearty cooperation, it is entirely reasonable to believe that the freedom of all the slaves would have been rapidly secured.
An emancipation measure was proposed in the Virginia Legislature as late as 1832 and discussed. The general course of the debate shows a readiness in that day to give freedom to negroes, and was of such strength that a motion to postpone with a view to ascertain the wishes of the people was carried by a vote of 65 to 58. In Delaware, Maryland and Kentucky legislation leading to emancipation had already been under consideration. North Carolina and Tennessee contained large populations of whites averse to slavery, and no doubt exists as to the action of those States at any time during the first years of the century. The Louisiana and Florida purchase and the Texas annexation having not yet taken place, and nearly the entire West and Southwest being a wild, the question of emancipation with moderate compensation would have easily prevailed through the South. The barrier in the beginning was the profitable sale of the slaves from Northern States, and from the slave trade carried on in the ships of foreign nations and New England, and the commercial advantage of the trade in the products of slave labor.
The interests of all Southern States except South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, only thirty years prior to the election of Lincoln, lay on the side of emancipation. The first named States were alone dependent for their development on the labor of the slave, and even in those States only their Southern areas demanded slave labor. The northern parts of these five States were even then better adapted to free white labor. In the light of the years which close this century, it is seen that no part of the South was dependent on slave labor, and that such supposed dependence was imaginary, not real. Therefore, it may be fairly inferred from the sentiment of the South in the beginning of this century, from the conditions of labor and commerce then existing, from the political considerations then at work, the South, in the first years of this century, would have begun the emancipation of its slaves upon a plan of compensation to the owner, justice to the negro and safety to society, had not the interests of other sections demanded the continuance of the domestic and foreign trade in man.
The period of twenty years granted by the Constitution for the continuance of the slave trade, was occupied actively in the importation of Africans throughout the Atlantic Southern States. During the same period the invention of the cotton gin increased vastly the commercial value of negro labor, not only to the producer, but most of all to the shipper and manufacturer of cotton. As a consequence, " the prosperity and commercial importance of a half dozen rising communities, the industrial and social order of a growing empire, the greatest manufacturing interest of manufacturing England, a vast capital, the daily bread of hundreds of thousands of free artisans, rested on American slavery." This new condition occurred at the period when the South was protesting against the African slave trade, and was exhibiting an increasing willingness to continue the emancipation movement, which had previously extended southward as far as Delaware, and had induced Virginia to include the anti-slavery clause in its great cession of Northwestern Territory. But the outlook of the cotton trade and the immense business arising from the increased production and manufacture of the staple were so beneficial to vast numbers in England and the United States, that the emancipation sentiment died down under the pressure of commercial considerations not only in the Cotton States, but also in the manufacturing and commercial centers of the world. (Greg's History, 351.) After the year 1808 (cessation of the legalized slave trade) the national increase of the enslaved race exceeded in percentage that of any free people on earth. Freed from care, fed, clothed and sheltered for the sake of their labor, protected from hurtful indulgence and worked with regularity--the physical conditions were all favorable to increase in numbers, stature, longevity and strength. It is clearly just to admit that such an improvement in the race imported from the African wilds undoubtedly proves the humanity with which these captured bondsmen were treated by the people of the United States.
It was this commercial value of the slave to the Southern planters of cane, cotton, rice and tobacco, and to the Northern and European shippers, manufacturers, merchants and operatives--a value caused by the crude, elementary materials of wealth which negro labor produced --a value that grew in great proportions for commerce--a value that began to assume political importance because of the power that it gave the slave-holding States---it was this factor which on the one hand blinded many in all sections to those moral and economic fallacies on which African slavery really rested, and on the other hand finally excited political jealousy and sectional fears of the power which the Southern section might acquire in the control of the Union.'

 

[NedStark]

I agree with others that international pressure will start to get serious around the same time as the Belgian Congo became an issue IOTL, so sometime between 1900 and 1910. I doubt that would mean that slavery would be immediately abolished, but it might be the beginning of a gradual phasing out. If slavery remains unchanged however they‘ll enter pariah status by the 1920s at the latest.

Wait, if slavery lasts until 1900, then we would see a situation in which the CSA becomes a slave-majority state population wise.

 

[Metempsychosis]

Wait, if slavery lasts until 1900, then we would see a situation in which the CSA becomes a slave-majority state population wise.

That sounds interesting...

 

[Slime_blob]

That sounds interesting...

Yes indeed, I could see poor whites who got nothing like as they can't get jobs due to the jobs being managed by the slaves. Meanwhile the slaves slowly agitating for freedom. This could definitely result into a huge mess where an alliance of slaves and poor whites rebel against the government

 

[Slime_blob]

I Wonder 🤔🤔🤔🤔 if that can go like ala Haitian revolution but with whites siding the slaves

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

That sounds interesting...

Ala Haiti.

 

[SWS]

Derived from Joseph Jones' address to the Cotton Planters' Association, Macon, GA, December 13, 1860


'And what will the South gain by the assertion of her independence?

The South will gain her commercial as well as her political independence--the thirty million of dollars of which the South is now yearly deprived in the collection and distribution of the revenues of the government, will be saved, and her revenue which goes now to sustain Northern manufactories and Northern ships, will be distributed among our own citizens, and will be expended in building up Southern manufactories, Southern towns and Southern commerce.

According to the last published report of the Secretary of the Treasury, the total imports of the Northern States for the year ending June 30th, 1859, was $305,812,849, whilst the total imports of the Southern States was only $32,955,281, whilst the exports of the Southern States during the same period were $200,000,000. If the independence of the Southern States was established, our Northern factors would be displaced, and more than $200,000,000 of imports now received at Northern ports, would enter Southern ports, and all the duties and advantages be received where they of right belong.

During the year ending June 30th, 1859, $143,045,445 of the Southern exports were carried in Northern vessels, whilst only $44,586,212 were carried in foreign vessels; during the same period, $27,898,653 of the Southern imports were brought by Northern vessels, whilst only $5,006,628 were brought by foreign vessels. When the independence of the South is established, the North will lose the protection of cunningly devised laws, and will have to enter into competition with the ships of the world for this carrying trade.

The Southern patriot should enquire with the deepest concern--what has become of all this immense amount of money, annually received by the South for her great staple products?

Has her greater production rendered her correspondingly greater and more powerful than the North? Has the South built more railroads, erected more factories, and supported more splendid seats of learning, than the North?

We are compelled to confess that in all permanent, agricultural, industrial and educational improvements, the North has surpassed the South.

The largest proportion of the money received by the South in exchange for cotton, rice and tobacco, has not remained in the South, but has flowed out for the protection of the North, and in the purchase of Northern and English manufactured goods, and in the support of Northern cities, Northern watering places, Northern commerce and Northern literary and scientific institutions, Northern authors, Northern papers, journals and books: the money of the South, therefore, has not fulfilled its high destiny.

It matters not what the income of a nation or of a man may be, if it is all expended abroad, no permanent benefit will be obtained. Money to be really useful to the country where it is produced, must be expended in that country, and must change hands often amongst its citizens, and like the life giving and force conveying red particles of the blood, be diverted into a thousand different channels, and accomplish a thousand beneficial results. It must build up and sustain manufactories, it must circulate in a never-ending stream between the agriculturist and the manufacturer--it must build ships and railroads--it must support those great institutions of science and learning, which will react upon the State and return in the development of her resources and in the scientific improvement of her agriculture, arts, and manufactures a thousand million fold.

It is time that Southern manufactories should be established and sustained by Southern money--it is time that this ruinous drain of money should be stopped--these great and vital results to the South can be accomplished in no other way than by establishing her independence. The fire and sword with which our Northern enemies threaten us, will prove our ultimate good and their final injury.'

 

[SWS]

He asserts Georgia in particular possesses some of the greatest economic potential of the entire South:

'With a population of more than one million, distributed over fifty-eight thousand square miles--with a territory three hundred and twenty-two miles in length from North to North, extending from the mild, almost tropical climate of the Atlantic coast to the cool bracing climate of the Blue Ridge mountains; two hundred and twenty-four miles in breadth from East to West; watered by fifty streams which deserve and hold the name of rivers--with a territory embracing almost every geological formation, from the oldest to the most recent found upon the Western continent; the primitive and metamorphic non-fossiliferous strata of Middle and Northern Georgia, with its inexhaustible mineral resources; the older fossiliferous formations of North-western Georgia, resembling the celebrated wheat district of New York, with its inexhaustible deposits of limestone, iron, coal, and other minerals useful in agriculture and the arts; the cretaceous formation of Western Georgia, with its inexhaustible beds of green sand and marl; the Eocene lime formation of Southern and South-western Georgia, with its inexhaustible supplies of lime and phosphoric acid; the rich alluvial and diluvial plains and river bottoms of Southern Georgia--with a territory embracing every variety of soil, suitable to the growth and culture of every important agricultural product, and yielding almost every mineral useful in the arts and agriculture--producing annually five hundred thousand bales of cotton, and with capabilities of producing under an improved system of agriculture, and with an increase of population, two million bales of cotton--with an annual surplus production of fifteen million of dollars--with 1160 miles of Railroads, which have been built and equipped at an actual cost of twenty millions of dollars--with 25 banks in a sound condition, returning during the last year $9,028,078, as their taxable stock paid in--with 33,345,289 acres of cultivated land, valued according to the tax returns of 1860, at $161,764,955 dollars; cultivated by 450,022 slaves, valued at $302,694,855--with city and town property, money and solvent debts, merchandise shipping, tonnage, stocks, and manufactories to the value of $207,832,640--with an increased value of land during the past year of $12,217,075, and increased value of slaves during the same period of $31,074,450--with a balance in her Treasury of $274,820, and with a tax upon slaves and other property of only 6¼ cents on the $100--with a taxable property of $609,589,876, which if distributed equally amongst the entire population, adults and children, black and white, would give to each inhabitant six hundred dollars; and if we were to estimate the absolute and not the tax value of the property, this sum would be even greater than one thousand dollars to each individual, black and white, man, woman and child--with fourteen hundred churches, capable of accommodating half a million of persons--with twelve hundred primary and public schools with twelve hundred teachers; fifteen colleges for males with thirteen hundred students; twenty-seven colleges and high schools for females, and twenty-five hundred female scholars--with fifty newspapers and periodicals--with resources and a territory capable of supporting with even greater ease than England supports her dense population, fifteen millions of inhabitants, GEORGIA has been and will ever continue to be, if she improves aright the blessings of Providence, the EMPIRE STATE of the SOUTH--Georgia is not only the Empire State of the South, but she has the resources and the power to maintain her independence with or without the South, and to form by herself an EMPIRE.'

 

[SWS]

An 1864 report for the Confederate Senate compiled by the Shelby Company "In Relation to the Iron Business of Alabama"


'The present supply of iron is inadequate for the public service, while the people are generally cut off from all sources of supply. The agriculturalists are generally without iron to repair their old and worn-out implements, new ones being out of the question, while there is danger that railroads, on which such vital interests depend, will lose much of their already impaired efficiency, for want of iron to keep their machinery in repair, and for the construction of the additional machinery greatly needed. A large and early increase in the production of iron must therefore be regarded as a matter of the highest necessity; and this region probably must be mainly relied on for this increase.

Before undertaking to show, as we propose to do, how this increase may be brought about, it will be proper to take a brief survey of the past, in connection with the natural resources of this region in the materials for the production of iron. Probably no country on the globe possesses superior, if equal, natural advantages for the production of iron of superior quality on an extensive scale. In a wide extent of country, intersected by the Alabama and Tennessee River Railroad, commencing at the city of Selma, on the Alabama river, and completed 135 miles in the direction of Rome, in Georgia, iron ores and mineral coal, both of superior quality and conveniently accessible, exist in inexhaustible abundance. These minerals, if not in juxtaposition, are yet in such proximity that they may be regarded as practically lying side by side. With these unsurpassed advantages, how is the comparative smallness of the production of iron to be accounted for?

At the commencement of the war, very little had been done to develop the mineral resources of this section or State. There was but one small blast furnace and a small and inferior rolling-mill in operation in this section, and none elsewhere, that we know of, in this State. Our people were content to draw their supplies of iron from England and the North, while overlooking, or perhaps ignorant of, the greatly superior natural advantages existing in their midst, for the production of iron of far better quality than most of that derived from abroad. Hence, the country was without the knowledge and skill, derived alone from experience, in the business of manufacturing iron, as those seem to have been to whom was committed the important duty of calling forth and directing the capital and energies to be embarked in the business. The mode of making iron, condemned and abandoned by England and other countries more than a century ago, was taken up and exclusively pursued; that is, the use of charcoal, instead of mineral coal, as fuel in the production of pig iron. All the contracts of which we have any knowledge, made with the Government for pig iron, call for charcoal pig alone, giving a decided preference in prices to that which is made by the slowest and most difficult process: that is, the cold blast charcoal pig. And here a brief reference may be allowed to the history of the manufacture of iron in England, whose mighty power and prosperity had their rise in, and are mainly sustained by, the two minerals heretofore so neglected, not to say despised, in the South--coal and iron.

A well-informed and intelligent writer, whose production shows that he had given very close attention to the subject, in enumerating the essentials for the successful prosecution of the business of making iron, states, as the first and most important: "An adequate supply of the requisite raw materials--ore, limestone and mineral coal--for charcoal, can only be used to an insignificant extent." In illustration of this, the same writer states: "It surprises the inquirer, to find that in the year 1740, the total production of iron in England amounted to not more than 17,350 tons. The destruction of wood caused by this insignificant product was so rapid, that the business of making iron was likely to be extinguished, when the evil which was dreaded gave birth to a remedy which imparted new life to the production, and has enabled it to reach its present gigantic proportions" --then (1855) estimated, or rather stated to be 3,585,906 tons. "This remedy was the substitution of pit or mineral coal for charcoal." This stupendous result was attained in England with ores much more difficult to be mined, and known to be greatly inferior in richness and other qualities to the ores which abound in this region. The ores of England and Wales, it is stated on good authority, yield only about 30 per cent of iron while the ores of this region, with which we are most familiar, yield from 50 to 60 per cent., and iron very greatly superior to the generality of that produced in England or Wales.'