LETTERS FROM AMERICA.
[This letter appeared in a portion of our English edition
of last week, but in none of our Irish edition.]
On the Hudson, State of New York.
THE HUDSON - STEAMBOAT TRAVELLING.
"Once more on the deck I stand" of one of these
moving hotels that ply on this beautiful river, from
New York to Troy, a distance of about 166 miles. This
moving house is 360 feet long; it has three decks, all of
which are crowded with ladies and gentlemen. The
lower deck is for eating and sleeping; a part of the second
deck for the business of the captain and his hands,
and for the poorer sort of travellers, who get a deck
passage at half fare. The other part of this second deck,
next the stern, is elegantly fitted up as a "ladies' saloon"
a sacred apartment, into which no one dare enter
who has not property within. The upper deck is
the grand and pleasant promenade - carpeted, mirrored,
and draperied all through, and covered from end to end
as one great room. It is furnished with the softest
seats in every shape, on which are lolling some of the
miscellaneous crowd of male or female passengers.-
Almost every person, male or female, has a newspaper
or a pamphlet, on which their eyes are occasionally
fixed. A silent decorum pervades the company, usually
consisting of about 300.
Few rivers offer so much to a admire as the Hudson.
It is but two centuries ago since it was surrounded by
dense forests, and fished by the red man. Far, far away
from its smiling banks is the red man now! and on the
sites of his wigwam may be seen the swelling city, and
handsome villas in every variety of architecture. This
beautiful water-course is formed by a confluence of
rivers above Troy, the largest of which is the Mawhawk,
which tumbles along for two hundred miles through the
most delightful valley in America. The sea tide ascends
to troy, and affords for eight or nine months of
the year a free navigation for all sorts of vessels-
steamers, brigs, sloops, and fishing boats.
This river was first discovered in 1608 by Captain
Hudson, an Englishman, who sailed in a Dutch merchant ship.
Having penetrated as far as Albany, he
returned to his employers in Amsterdam, described the beauty of
the country, led to the formation of the Dutch
West Indian Company, who colonised all these parts,
laying the foundation of the city of Manhatta, which
is now the opulent and far-famed city of New York. All
these settlements were seized from the Dutch in the
reign of Charles the Second by his admiral and brother,
the Duke of York, and thence passed under the government
of Britain; but the settlements along this river
are all mostly Dutch in name and character. The
Dutch have,from the first plantation to the present,
continued to follow each other,and to settle in the cities
and on the lands. They are a thrifty race - a very
thrifty, economical race-most laborious in the fields,
and most persevering and miserably careful in traffic.
They have a Reproductive Loan Society in New York,
which advance suitable sums to new comers, to enable
them to set up in business. This fund is ever augmenting,
and ever sustaining the emigrants of that nation,
who have, by its aid and by their great thrift, obtained
hundreds upon hundreds of the best houses of business
in New York city.
AN AMERICAN PRISON.
At Auburn, a few miles from this place, I visited the
State Prison. It is celebrated as the best-managed jail
in the Union. I was brought through the whole establishment,
and truly it is a wonderful place. There are
at present confined within the establishment 683 male
criminals. They are not of the petty larcenry tribe, but
are stained with deeper guilt. Their terms of imprisonment
vary from two years to the natural period of
their lives. Of the whole 683, 560 are native-born
Americans - 123 are foreigners. Of the latter, but 45
are Irish (a fact that loud lt proclaims the high morality
of the Irish emigrants).
There is no law in the United States for transporting
criminals. All men who commit a crime are compelled
to work for the benefit of the State. The Auburn prison
is fitted up. therefore, not only as a great prison,
but as a great factory. In this, indeed, consists its very
great interest. I feel some difficulty in describing it.
All the great branches of national manufacture are here
conducted with the aid of the most complex machinery:
from the penknife to the steam-boiler - from broad cloth
to carpeting - from the shoe to the hat, are here made
and finished in the most superior way. Carpet weaving
in all its curious and complex variety is extensively
conducted - worsted spinning and dyeing, machine
making, edge tool making, cooperage, cabinet making,
carriage making, smith work. cloth and cotton
manufacturing, tailoring, shoe making, cutlery of the most
finished kind, colour making, steam engines, &c.
Each branch has its own capacious workshop - its
clerks, overseers, and apparatus. One immense steam
engine moves all the machinery of the prison, by means
of connecting shafts, drums, &c. The convicts are, on
their entrance into prison, set to whatsoever trade they
have the best acquaintance with. Their labour is forfeited
to the State during their term of imprisonment,
and there are contractors who rent this labour within
the prison walls, and who furnish the raw material and
superintend for their own account the manufacture into
all the various articles I have alluded to.
These contractors have no authority over the criminals
who are always under the control of the state
officers. In the morning the prisoners,in companies
attend in the dining hall to pray; they then take breakfast
which consists of Indian meal gruel and brown bread,and
potatoes: and their supper of Indian meal gruel and
bread. This maintenance costs the State six cents (3d.)
a day. The labour of the prisoners comes to four times
this amount,leaving a large profit to the State. By
the annual report of last year, the cost of the establishment
was 53,597 dollars-leaving a profit on the year
of some 8,000 dollars.
But it is not so much for the saving of this money
that this admirable system is deserving of your attention
-your imitation. I would add - as that it forms a
practical school or nursery of manufactures. The article
of fine cutlery, for instance, was first manufactured
on this side of the Atlantic in this prison. They can
now almost cope with Sheffield, and the manufacture
has been last year commenced in other parts of the
State.
Manufactures grow to perfection and prosperity very
slowly in any nation, but in such an oppressed, distracted
country as Ireland, how very, very slow is their
progress we who read THE NATION need not be told. A
million sterling a year is levied from the poor farmers
and citizens as "grand jury cess." This goes to the
support of the thirty or forty jails of Ireland, and pay
the cost (about 100l. a head) of transporting the miserable
men whose poverty forms the chief ingredient of
their crime. If you would see the wisdom of immediately
converting the expensive jails of Ireland into factories,
which would not only relieve the people of so much
taxes, but lay the foundation of a new national system of
manufactures.
Recollect that the cotton manufacture was introduced
into the north of Ireland in 1777, through the Belfast
poorhouse. It was begun as a means of employment for
the pauper children. Messrs. Joy and McCabe, the
overseers, brought over a man from Scotland to teach
the paupers; but the governors, unwilling to embark in
a manufacturing undertaking, declined to encourage it
to a serious extent: whereupon Mr.McCabe formed a
partnership with Mr.McCracken, and began the
manufacture on their own account, being encouraged to do
so by the skill manifested by the pauper children. They
were the first cotton spinners in the north.
If the Irish jails were converted into Irish factories,
and the money expended in transportation employed in
capital to aid the enterprise, you would have many
branches of manufactures flourishing in Ireland, of
which nothing is known. But nothing is
doing for Ireland, and nothing substantial will be done,
until she resolves on doing it herself!
AN EXILE.
