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122
MANUFACTURES.
Chap. VII.

the west. It has regular freight steamers to New Orleans, St. Louis, and other places on the Missouri and Mississippi; to Wheeling and Pittsburgh, and thence by railway to the great Atlantic cities, Philadelphia and Baltimore, while it is connected with the Canadian lakes by railway and canal to Cleveland. Till I thoroughly understood that Cincinnati is the centre of a circle embracing the populous towns of the south, and the increasing populations of the lake countries and the western territories, with their ever-growing demand for the fruits of manufacturing industry, I could not understand the utility of the vast establishments for the production of household goods which arrest the attention of the visitor to the Queen City. There is a furniture establishment in Baker Street, London, which employs perhaps eighty hands, and we are rather inclined to boast of it, but we must keep silence when we hear of a factory as large as a Manchester cotton-mill, five stories high, where 260 hands are constantly employed in making chairs, tables, and bedsteads.

At the factory of Mitchell and Rammelsberg common chairs are the principal manufacture, and are turned out at the rate of 2500 a week, worth from 1l. to 5l. a dozen. Rocking-chairs, which are only made in perfection in the States, are fabricated here, also chests of drawers, of which 2000 are made annually. Baby-rocking cribs, in which the brains of the youth of America are early habituated to perpetual restlessness, are manufactured here in surprising quantities. The workmen at this factory (most of whom are native Americans and Germans, the English and Scotch being rejected on account of their