Among other interesting items which Cobden made note of in America was that everywhere wood was used for fuel, "excepting at Brownsville, Virginia, where beds of coal jut out of the hillside, and all the people have to do is to help themselves." Pittsburgh interested him, and he spent a week there: went to a theater and heard England hissed and Columbia exalted. Pittsburgh burned only wood for fuel, the wood being brought down on flatboats. At Youngstown, Ohio, were three hundred horses used on the many stagecoaches that centered there. There was a steamboat that ran from Cleveland to Buffalo in two days and a night, stopping seven times on the way to take on passengers and goods and wood for fuel. At Buffalo you could hear the roar of Niagara Falls and see the mist. Arriving at the Canada side of the Falls he was shaved by a negro who was a runaway slave, all negroes in Canada being free. Cobden says: "The States are not especially adapted for agricultural products, the land being hilly and heavily wooded. American exports are cotton, wool, hides and lumber." It will thus be seen that in Eighteen Hundred Thirty-six America had not been discovered. Arriving in England, Cobden began to write out his ideas and issue them in pamphlet form at his own expense. For literature, as such, he seemed to have had little thought, literature being purely a secondary love-product. * * * * * Cobden's work was statistical, economic, political and philosophic. From writing he read his pamphlets before various societies and lyceums. Debates naturally followed, and soon Cobden was forced to defend his theories. He was nominated for a seat in Parliament and was defeated. Next year he ran again and was elected. The political canvass had given freedom to his wings; he had learned to think on his feet, to meet interruption, to parry in debate. The air became luminous with reasons. England then had a tax on everything, including bread. On grains and meat brought into England there was an import tax which was positively prohibitive. This tax was for the dual purpose of raising revenue for the Government, and to protect the English farmer. Of course, the farmer believed in this tax which prevented any other country from coming into competition with himself.