Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/137

 intemperance) earn from 12 to 14 dollars a week. At another factory 1000 bedsteads, worth from 1l. to 5l. each, are completed every week. There are vast boot and shoe factories, which would have shod our whole Crimean army in a week, at one of which the owner pays 60,000 dollars or 12,000l. in wages annually! It consumes 5000 pounds weight of boot-nails per annum! The manufactories of locks and guns, tools, and carriages, with countless other appliances of civilized life, are on a similarly large scale. Their products are to be found among the sugar plantations of the south, the diggers of California, the settlers in Oregon, in the infant cities of the far West, the tent of the hunter, and the shanty of the emigrant; in one word, wherever demand and supply can be placed in conjunction.

And while the demand is ever increasing as the tide of emigration rolls westward, so the inventive brains of the Americans are ever discovering some mechanical means of abridging manual labour, which seldom or ever meets the demand. The saws, axes, and indeed all cutting tools made at respectable establishments in the States, are said to be superior to ours. On going into a hardware store at Hamilton in Upper Canada, I saw some English spades and axes, and I suppose my face expressed some of the admiration which my British pride led me to feel; for the owner, taking up some spades and cutting-tools of Cincinnati manufacture, said, "We can only sell these; the others are bad workmanship, and won't stand two days' hard work."

Articles of English manufacture are not seen in considerable quantities in the wholesale stores, and even the