The iron trade of the United States, and the domestic manufacture of iron, were spoken of by Mr. Gallatin, in a report to Congress, in 1810, as being firmly established. He was able to obtain very imperfect information about it, but it was known that iron ore was plentiful; that numerous forges and furnaces had been erected, supplying “a sufficient quantity of hollow-ware, and of castings of every description.” From Russia, about forty-five hundred tuns of bar iron were imported yearly, and perhaps another forty-five hundred from Sweden and England. A vague estimate gave fifty thousand tuns of bar iron as the annual consumption of the union, of which he considered forty thousand as the product of the republic. Some good iron was made in Virginia and Pennsylvania, but much inferior iron, carelessly manufactured, was brought into market. Of sheet, slit, and hoop iron, about five hundred and sixty-five tuns were annually imported; about seven thousand tuns were rolled and slit in the United States. Massachusetts had thirteen rolling and slitting mills, and the value of cut nails and brads made within the republic in a year, was estimated at twelve hundred thousand dollars. Nearly three hundred tuns of cut nails were exported. Agricultural implements were made at home, and much coarse ironmongery; but cutlery, fine hardware, and steel work, were brought from Britain. About forty thousand muskets were yearly made in New England and at Harper’s Ferry: also balls, shells, and brass and iron cannon, in various places. There were several iron founderies for machinery castings, and steam-engines had begun to be made at Philadelphia. Mr. Gallatin valued the iron and manufactures of iron then annually made at home, at from twelve to fifteen millions of dollars, and the imports at near four millions, as prices went. Adam Seybert enumerates the domestic products of 1810, at 53,908 tuns of pig iron, from 153 furnaces; 24,541 tuns of bar iron from 330 forges; 15,727,914 pounds of nails (partly out of imported iron) from 410 naileries; and 6,500 tuns of iron were required at 316 trip-hammers and thirty-four rolling and slitting mills. His estimate of the value of the home manufacture is $14,364,526. In 1806 or 1807, Chancellor Livingston, then our minister to France, had to apply repeatedly to the British ministry for permission to buy in England, and export to New York, the steam-engine which Fulton put on board his first steamboat on the Hudson. Now, the manufacture of steam-engines is an important branch of our home industry.