Page:MonumentalCity1873.djvu/37

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32
The Monumental City,

with Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Richmond, Norfolk, and all the lesser places on the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries, Wilmington and New Berne, N. C, Charleston, Savannah, Key West, New Orleans, Havana and Galveston; while two prospering lines of steamers to Europe, the North German Lloyd to Bremen via Southampton, and the Allan line to Liverpool via Halifax, demonstrate the fact that the foreign commerce that was once enjoyed by Baltimore needed but the opportunity to return. The imports at the port of Baltimore, which in 1860, amounted to $9,784,773, and in 1862, in consequence of the war, had fallen to $3,696,620, rose in 1870, to $21,017,313; in 1871, to $26,770,181; and in 1872 to $29,429,439. The exports of domestic merchandise for the same years were, in 1860, $8,804,606; in 1862, $8,375,303; in 1870, $12,396,518; in 1871, $18,236,166, and in 1872, $17,381,591. The industrial products of the city and county of Baltimore amounted, according to the census of 1870, to the sum of $59,219,993 annu- ally, in which was employed capital amounting to $26,040,040. The popu- lation of the city had increased from 212,418 in 1860, to 267,599 in 1870.* The property in the city and county was estimated in the census at $401,634,738. The tonnage of the port is 150,086. Thus rapidly and in the merest outline, we have endeavored to trace the growth of Baltimore, from the straggling village of 1730, to the prosperous city of 1872. Whatever its growth has been hitherto, it is but the earnest of its capabilities for development. Its geographical position as regards the interior has been spoken of; as regards Europe, its position at the head of a bay, which was formerly considered a disadvantage to it as a seaport, enables the shipping to come that much nearer the interior, and by conveying freight further by water, and in bulk, causes a corresponding reduction in the cost of transportation; while the proximity of Baltimore to the coal regions, and the direct communication with them, which enables the steamers to take in their coal at $2.50 per ton less than it costs in New York, gives a direct saving of $2,000 upon the 800 tons consumed by steamers in each voyage across the Atlantic. The neighboring mines of anthracite and bituminous coal; the marble quarries of Baltimore County; the iron beds with which the State abounds; the lavish wealth of the Chesapeake Bay, with its world- renowned game and oysters and fish, afford in themselves a ready-made and apparently inexhaustible store of riches.

  • An enumeration made the same year by the City Police, put the population at 283,375.