Page:Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the state of New York.djvu/21

Rh This essay will be confined to the port of New York, and, when the contrary is not expressly stated, it treats of immigration in connection with New York only.

The present metropolis of American commerce, although one of the oldest cities built by European emigrants, had become more than two hundred years old before she assumed the leading part in the trade of the country. According to the first census, taken in 1790, the State of New York was the fifth in population, and ranked even after Massachusetts and North Carolina. In 1800, it rose to the third; 1810, to the second, and only in 1820 to the first position, which it has since maintained. The city of New York kept even pace with the State. During the first ten years of the present century, she was inferior to Philadelphia, the then largest city in the United States, in population and commerce. In 1820, she numbered, for the first time, a few thousand inhabitants more than the Quaker City; but, in the decade of 1820 to 1830, she established her superiority beyond any doubt. The noble work of her great statesman, De Witt Clinton, viz., the connection of the Atlantic with the great lakes by a canal, carried out between 1817 and 1825, proved the firm basis on which New York City built her all-controlling influence and power, always steadily advancing and never receding, and to-day mightier than ever before. Had there been no De Witt Clinton, had there been no Erie Canal, in vain would have been the central position and commercial advantages of this city. She was not the first city of America until her great men gave artificial extension and development to those advantages, and thereby fixed on her, for centuries, the honored advantage of being the emporium of the Western World. If she is to maintain this position, she will do it because she will have great men continually able to keep her in advance. As she has seized the canal, telegraph, and railroad and pressed them into her services, so she must be ready, as new inventions are presented, to seize them and turn them to her advantage. Prior to the completion of the Erie Canal, New York had but a small number, if any, of staple articles which she could export. Even ten years expired after that event before she could compete with the other harbors of the Eastern coast. Charleston had her cotton, rice, and indigo, for which European vessels