Publisher's Synopsis
The subject of these pages, as will be seen by the title-page, is American civilization, as symbolized by the institutions of the chief State of the Republic, New York. Not that there is a specialty concerning these papers of Mr. Mayo's, or a desire on his part to give them but a local interest, only that no other State of the Confederacy so fully represents, in all its wondrous phases, the new civilization of the Western World as does the Empire State, possessed, as it is, of a commerce that searches the ends of the earth, and superior, as it is, to all others in population, wealth, and executive power, has been chosen by him as the best mirror in which we can behold the reflection of our present progress, and the obstacles that hinder our more rapid advancement. Had we space, we should take pleasure in commenting on the bold, radical reasoning contained in these pages, some of which, we opine, would fall like molten load into the stomachs of some of "our" barbarians, should they, by any happy chance, fall in with these jottings of Mr. Mayo's; but a few facts must suffice.
In speaking of the rapid progress made in the industrial civilization of our own good State, he says: -"The same year that Fulton and Livingston obtained the exclusive right of navigating the Hudson, (1803, ) witnessed the gigantic idea of connecting the Hudson and the great lakes by a canal, and although thirteen years elapsed before the mandate went forth in 1825, the Hudson was duly married to Like Champlain and Erie. The following year (1820) was signalized by the passage of the first railroad charter in the Legislature, and four years later the first railroad train came rolling from the Mohawk to the Hudson. The Empire State is now veined by 2,749 miles of railroads, which furnish one-tenth of all our assessed valuation of real and personal estate, whose employees number one fourteenth of our entire population, and one thirty-sixth of our voters; over which 750,000 tons harden roll yearly, and 40,000 people ride every day. To each inhabitant of the State is due 135 miles of travel a year, with only the remote risk of death to one passenger in 1,262,165, or one for every 47,164,426 miles of travel."
And again, in speaking of our broad acres, he says: - Of her 26,000,000 acres, 13,000,000 already have yielded to cultivation, and sustain a population of 3,470,059 divided into 663,124 families, who in all the elements of a Christian civilization doubtless excel any equal number of people concentrated under one government. The value of these lands be represents at $1,107,272,715, and their yearly product at 3,256,948 tons of hay; 62,449.093 bushels of grain; 17,127,338 bushels of esculent roots; 4,907,556 pounds of flax; 7,192,254 pounds of hops; 13 663,830 bushels of apples; 9,231,959 pounds of wool; $2,100,000 value of poultry; 90,293,077 pounds of butter; 38,944,249 pounds of cheese; 4,935,815 pounds of sugar; 2,557,876 pounds of honey, and $1,138,032 value of garden produce. Then comes $106,349,977 capital of mechanical industry in New York; raw material employed, $178,394,329; manufactured articles, $317,636,635; with 24,833 manufactories. And finally, we have the child of all these mighty forces - the press, crowded with the daily and weekly results of toil, reaching forth with such hands as the steamship, canal, railroad, machinery, and telegraph, and levying tribute over the whole world; scattering 3,334,910 copies of its various issues perpetually over the State; now a reflection of what is best, and anon what is worst, in our popular life, and we have same faint symbols of the mighty power of mind and action that in two hundred and thirty-eight years has changed 46,000 square miles of wilderness into one of our chief republican States.
-"The Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review," Volume 40 [1859]
