Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820Flint, James, active 19th century
History
Flint's Letters from America, 1818-1820
Flint, James, active 19th century
Ohio River Valley -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
The museum contains a considerable collection of objects; and among the
rest a skeleton of an entire mammoth. Around the upper part of the wall
are arranged the portraits of several hundreds of the personages who
have distinguished themselves in the revolution, or in the legislature
of America. The design is praiseworthy, but the execution of the
pictures is bad.
The state prison does honour to the jurisprudence of the country. The
culprit is not made a burden on the community, but is put to work,
and the first of his earnings applied to his support, a part of the
remainder is given to him at his dismissal; by this means he is not
under the necessity of resorting immediately to robbery or theft.
Habits of industry are acquired, and trades learned, by persons who
previously were pests to society. The strict order, and even silence,
that is maintained in the establishment, is conceived to be the
peculiarity that has produced the effects that distinguish it above
every institution of the kind. The provisions given to the inmates are
said to be plentiful and good, though furnished at the low rate of {33}
fourteen cents, or about seven-pence-half-penny English, per day.
Philadelphia does not abound in manufacturing establishments. The
predominance of British goods has shut up many workshops that were
employed during the late war. Paper is manufactured in great quantities
in Pennsylvania. Founderies for coarse cast iron articles are numerous.
In town there are two manufactories of lead shot. Printing is carried
on to a considerable extent, and executed in a superb style. It is said
that one of the late Edinburgh novels was here set up in types in one
day. The quarto edition of Joel Barlow’s Columbiad is an unrivalled
specimen of printing. The types were cast by Messrs. Binnie and
Ronaldsons, who, by their skill and individual exertions, have saved
the United States from importing these essential literary implements.
Mr. Melish’s[27] geographical establishment, is another prominent
concern. He is continually embodying the most recent government surveys
of the interior, into the general maps of the country. At Lehigh Falls,
on the Schuylkill, there is a mill for cutting brads, which produces no
less than two hundred in a minute. Philadelphia is in various respects
well adapted to manufacture; if the facilities which it presents for
its advancement are neglected, the city must decline, as the trade of
New York and Baltimore is making rapid progress. The new road from the
latter city to the Ohio,[28] and the extension of carriage, by steam
boats, through the Mississippi and the Ohio, are all circumstances
which tend to supersede Philadelphia as a market and as a thoroughfare.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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