Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/57

Rh district of the city of New York had 572,522 tons, or 70,939 more than all the Southern States united. The difference in the internal improvements of the two sections is quite as remarkable. In general, the public highways in the slave-holding States are far inferior to those of the North, both in extent and character. If the estimates made are correct, in 1846 there were, omitting the fractions, 5663 miles of railroad actually in operation in the United States. In all the slave States together there were 2090 miles. Taking the cost of such as are described in trustworthy sources, and estimating the value of those not so described by the general cost per mile of railroads in the same State, then the slave States have invested dls 43,910,183 in this property. In the free States there were 3573 miles of railroad, which had cost dls 112,914,465 Thus the free States have 1483 Smiles of railroad more than the South, the value of which is dls 69,004,282 above the value of all the railroads of the slave States. The railroads in Pennsylvania have cost dls 43,426,385; within less than half a million of the value of all the railroads in all the slave States. Maryland, from her position, resembles the free States in many respects. Besides those of this State, all the railroads of the South are worth only dls 27,717,835, while those of Massachusetts alone have cost dls 30,341,444, and are now, on the average, five or six per cent, above par. The State of South Carolina has only paid dls 5,671,452 for her railroad stock. I will not undertake to estimate its present value. Nor need I stop to inquire how many miles or the Southern roads have been planned by Northern skill, paid for by the capital of the free States, and are owned by their citizens!

Let us next consider the increase of the value of the landed property in the free and the slave States. In 1798, the value of all the houses and lands in the eight slave States, that is, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and Tennessee, was estimated at dls 197,742,557 ; that of the houses and lands in the eight free States—New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania—was dls 422,235,780. It is not easy to ascertain exactly the value of real property in all these States at this moment. But in 1834-6, the govern-