Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/47

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34
THOUGHTS ON AMERICA.


real estate of South Carolina, with her 24,500 square miles of land. South Carolina "owns" 384,984 slaves; at $400 a head, they would come to $153,993,600. The actual property of the inhabitants of Boston, in 1854, is sufficient to buy all those slaves, and then leave a balance sufficient to pay the market value of all the houses and land in that proud State.

In 1839, the census value of the annual agricultural products of the entire South was $312,380,151; that of the free States, $342,007,446. Yet the South had an advantage by nature, and 249,780 more persons engaged in agriculture.

The manufactures of the South for that year were worth $42,178,184; of the North, $197,658,040.

The aggregate earnings of all the South were $403,429,718, of the North, $658,705,108. The entire earnings of the two Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana, amounted to $189,321,719; those of New York to $193,806,433.

Omitting the territories and California from the estimate, in 1850, the fifteen slave States contained 190,297,188 acres of land in farms ; the fifteen Northern States only 97,087,778 acres. But the Northern farms were worth $283,023,483, while the Southern were valued at only $253,583,234. The South has 93,000,000 acres the most land, and it is worth $30,000,000 the least.

The South has invested $95,918,842 in manufacturing establishments which give an annual return of $167,906,350: while the North has $431,290,351 in manufactures, with a yearly earning of $845,430,428. In 1853, the South had 438,297 tons of shipping; at $40 a ton it was worth $17,331,880. The North had 3,831,047 tons, worth $153,241,880.

On the 1st of September, 1852, the South had 2,144 miles of railroad; the North 9,661 miles. The cost of 1,140 miles of railroad in Massachusetts with its equipment was $56,559,982.

In 1850, the aggregate value of aU the property real and personal of the fifteen slave States was $2,755,411,554; that of fifteen free States—omitting California—was $3,186,683,924. But in the Southern estimate the value of the working men is included ; appraising the 3,200,412