The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and PoliticsVarious
General
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866: A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
Our chief bankers estimate their annual remittances to American citizens
for foreign travel and residence abroad at less than five millions
yearly. Our exports again exceed our imports, and foreign exchange is at
7-1/4 in gold, or two per cent below par. An emigration, chiefly from
Germany, greatly in excess of any former year is predicted. It has been
well ascertained that each emigrant brings, on the average, seventy
dollars in funds to this country, and these funds alone will suffice to
meet our interest abroad. What period could be more auspicious for a
gradual return, say in six months, to specie? Of course there would be
some decline in merchandise, but the loss would fall on declining
stocks, often sold in advance, and would not reach stocks in bond, the
price of which is to be paid in specie. The improvident might suffer a
little; but when the first shock was past, would not a strong impulse be
given to industry? Would not enterprise be at once directed to the
erection of the houses, factories, ships, steamers, locomotives, and
railways which our growth demands? Would not the community immediately
seek to renew their wardrobes and furniture, now worn out or exhausted
by the war? Our mutual friend Mr. Smith might then meet his friend the
coal-merchant with a smile, and cheer himself with his open fireplace,
putting away his stifling but economic stove; he might postpone his
retirement from the three-story brick to the wooden two-story in the
suburbs, eat his roast beef again on Sunday, and regale himself with
black coffee after dinner, without a thought of the slow but sagacious
Dutchman, who is transferring at his expense a national debt of
$800,000,000 from the sea-girt dikes of little Holland to the populous
and fertile isles and spice groves and coffee plantations of Sumatra and
Java.
FOOTNOTES:
[F] Report of the United States Revenue Commission to the Secretary of
the Treasury, January 29th, 1866.
[G] The annual product of lumber in Maine is rated at 1,100,000,000
feet, worth $20,000,000. By the census of 1860, the lumber produced by
all the States was valued at $95,000,000. The consumption was at least
$100,000,000, or five times the amount furnished by Maine. Canada has
287,000 square miles of pine forest on the waters of the St. Lawrence.
MEPHISTOPHELEAN.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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