The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-20 00:00:00

THE WESTERN STATES.

,(From the Special Correspondent of the Times.)
CINCINNATI, OHIO, Oct. 3.

T he election which is to come on nine days from
thi a in the State of Ohio will show to what extent
tb.ese people are bent on the indefinite prolongation
of the civil war. It is in the meanwhile important
to inquire into the balance between gain and loss
incurred by this western community in consequence
of thi s momentous event, in which many are still
unwilling to recognise a great national calamity.
At the time of the drawing up of the last census,
in 1860, what member of the North American
Uni-on could be said to vie in prosperity with the
happy State of Ohio ? With an area of 39,954
square miles, and a population of 2,339,500 inhabi-
tants, Ohio enjoyed the first rank in the States for
the production of wool and Indian corn; it was
exceeded by only one other State in wheat, barley,
cheese, and live stock; it occupied the third place
in the production of oats, potatoes, buckwheat,
grasses, hay, maple, sugar, butter, tobacco, hemp,
silk, and wine. It boasted 3,231 miles of railways.
Its canals yielded from 1846 to 1861 a gross re-
venue of 8,521 dole. ; and the net earnings were in
some years no less than 5,000,000 dole. The State
had a school-fund exceeding 2,796,241 dole., and
gava for educational purposes 3,694,527 dole., con-
secrating to this object a larger sum than wasle-
ntawed upon it by all the 14 Southern or slaveh b
od.
ing States taken together.
In this marvellously thriving condition, we are
told, the war, far from bringing any perceptible
abatement, has caused a most satisfactory improve-
ment. The annual statement of the commerce of
Cincinnati" for the commercial year ending August
31, 1863, gives the following value of imports and
exports for the last four years..—
Imports. Exports.
03 317 216 dole. .. 77,037,181 dole.
1850-60 .. ,
.. 67,231,126
1860.61 .• 90,1'136
103,292,893 76,449,862
1861-62 ..
2-63 141,189,213 .. 102
86 ,397, i7l
IThe live stock, which in 186 u was 8,221,481, of
the value of 69,583,000 dols., rose in 1862 to
9,126,937, estimated at 70,463,868 dole. The acres
or land sown with every variety of breadstuffs were,
5n 1860, 45,500,000, yielding 143,600,000 bushels;
1,538,562 acres of meadow land yielded, in the same
year, 2,027,000 tons of hay ; 96,254 acres produced
9,365,386 bushels of potatoes, &e. I have been as-
sured that, although the State of Ohio furnished a
contingent of 184,000 men to the national army,
d, not one acre of land has fallen out of cultivation."
It is, however, nowhere asserted that ono acre has
been tilled out of the great mass of territory which
had not yet been rescued from the native forest, the
swamp, or the prairie. I learn, also, that from
July, 1860, to July, 1861, 11,233 aliens have been
naturalised ; of these, 5,949 were Germans ; 2,106
were Irish, and the rest Welsh, English, &e. Allow-

ing an equal number for the ensuing year, we should
have an increase of population accruing from foreign
immigration of 22,000 persons at the utmost—
doubtless very far from filling up the gap occasioned
by the drain of the war.
The annual statement above referred to, while
congratulating the State on the great prosperity
enjoyed during the past year, does not conceal the
fact that it was mainly owing to " the vast sums of
money spent by the Government in the prosecution
of the war." The people who thereby made
rapid fortunes spent them freely and extrava-
gantly, so that trade flourished and wealth in-
creased with a rapidity and generality before un-
known. " There has been a steady demand for the
luxuries as well as the necessaries of life, and this
has given constant employment to the workshops ;
labour has been scarce and in demand, and higher
wages obtained than ever before known." The
lowest wages for unskilled labour are from 1 dol.
25c. to 2 dels. per diem ; but the salaries of clerks,
foremen, head waiters, and others have not risen in
proportion, so that the real gain was only percep-
tible among those classes out of which the army
has been more largely recruited. We know that
coal sells throughout the West twice and thrice
higher than in former years, owing to the difficulty
of finding men to work the mines; and Government
has been compelled to impress several hundred
negro slaves in Kentucky to hasten the completion
of the important railway from Lexington, in Ken-
tucky, to Knoxville, Tennessee—vitally important
in a strategic point of view—in the impossibility of
achieving that enterprise by free labour.
The main business of Cincinnati and Ohio pre-
vious to the war consisted in its trade with the South,
to which, besides a large part of its vast agricultu-
ral produce, was sent the main bulk of its extensive
manufactures. Besides being the great emporium
for the export of the fruits of the richest soil on
this continent, this statcly,well-built, and pleasantly
situated town of Cincinnati employed a great num-
ber of operatives in its workshops, swelling thus the
mass of its population to 161,000 souls in 1860, with
an increase of 45,000 during the ten previous years.
The Southern trade came, of course, to an end with
the closing of the Mississippi river, bat the capture
of Vicksburg and Port Hudson, though it may lead
to a gradual resumption of trade with the people
on the borders of the Lower Mississippi, will not
revive it with the speed and alacrity which some
people anticipated. Indeed, as I have often said,
the North is bent on the utter ruin and dis-
organisation of those Southern countries, the
West must to a great extent be involved in that
destructi on, unless it finds elsewhere new channels
and new markets for its redundant commodities.
Prom the outbreak of the war to the present day
a vast marketthe furnishin waft supplied by the Government in
eastern railwag °Ehthe all-consuming army, and the
gh
extensive answered the purpose of active
thou
which
Was channels, instead of the water-
course,
The cities
ofclosedOhio
against the Western mer-
chants.anilai° are not so far from New
York, Philadelphia,
Illinois and Missouri, and Washingtonthe as those of
Cincinnati to those eastern railway freight from
marts,
is not so utterly ruinous as it isf however heavy,
from Chicago or St.
Louis. Hence,
Ohio has been able doubtotless, this
„rem,
_r central region of
wonderful good fortune hitherto. Hence the in--
" the storm with a
crease in its imports and exports, remarkable es
so
t
otally in this last year, which, however, is
no `l3B*
much owing to the larger quantity of the
merchan-
dise as to the great advance in price of nearl all
of both home and foreign produce.
articles Take, for
pork, which was formerly the
instance, main staple
commodity of this State, and which
gave this city
eof Porkopolis." The pork
its nickname Crop Was
this year an immense one, and the business done iu
is 0- far exceeded that of any previous
pork pt.c,,lnc, did not prove profitable, as
season. Yet the trade
as too high, notwithstand-
'd for hogs w
the price pal But while this in-
jured- ted currency.
ins; the depreciated currency.
farmer, " for while
it helped the
the dealer,
the price compared with
the specie standard was
practical purposes high,
low, it was, in fact, for all
d debts, but enabled him
as the currency not only pal
to bay land at old prices (for land did not advance),
and to stock his farm at a but slight advance over
previous rates." I quote this from official sources,
because it only confirms the statement ventured in
one of my letters from Chicago, that the copious
flood of greenbacks all over the country
was an
immensen at large,
benefit to the rural population
and bettered their condition, even though labour
was too their agri'
scarce to enlarge to any extent
enitural operations.
One of the i
most bountiful sources of nng
for this city was to be found in the manufacture of
ready-made clothing,
a very probable market. Those engaged in it have
been since the outbreak of the war employed almost
exclusively in the Retinae of the Government and in
the fitting out of the array. In 1860 this branch of
business employed in the whole State of
hands, and produced 16,000,000 (us Ohio 13,000
increased
worth of goods.
The trade is said to have greatly
l of late,
but I can obtain no statistics of the business All
I know is that Cincinnati alone boasts
ol wholesale
and 80 retail houses engaged in this branch of in-
dustry, and their lofty stores and Warehonses are
among the most conspicuous buildings of this city.
No less than 8,000 women and girls are said to End
their sustenance in this slop work, which is generally
conducted by sharp speculators of German extrac-
tion and of the Jewish " persuasion."
On the other hand, the distillation of spirits, which