Statement of the amount of Coinage at the Mint of the United States, in the several denominations

Totals 1,360,351 7,203,755 1,247,626 9,811,732 52,741,350 00 | 2,320,390 108,101,326

of Coin, from the commencement of its operations, until the 31st of December, 1847, inclusive.

Statement of the annual amounts of Deposits of Gold, for Coinage, at the Mint of the United States and its Branches, from Mines in the United States.

570,080 22,573

Recapitulation of the amount of Coinage at the Mint of the United States and its Branches, from the commencement of operations to December 31, 1847.

[For the very interesting facts contained in the following statements, we are mainly indebted to the statistical articles of Col. Childs, the editor of the Commercial list, who has devoted himself with unusual perseverance and ability to the collection of valuable information on these and kindred subjects. It gives us pleasure to mention that he has in preparation, (nearly completed,) a set of tables exhibiting the exports of grain from the United States, with the prices for every month since the year 1785.]

THE COAL TRADE OF PENNSYLVANIA is attracting, more and more, the attention of the country. No thinking person can contemplate its progress without being deeply impressed with the importance, to our Union, of the state in which such vast resources of fuel are found.

If the importance of the coal trade is inconceivably great, its progress has been astonishing. Anthracite coal was first used as fuel (on tide water) in 1820, and the total supply then sent to market, was 365 tons!-a quantity smaller than that now annually consumed by hundreds of single establishments. We now find a single Iron Manufacturing company consuming 60,000 tons of anthracite, and 100,000 bushels of bituminous coals annually.

From being regarded as a doubtful article of combustion, anthracite coal has come to be largely used for domestic purposes, for the production of steam in manufacturing establishments, for propelling steamboats and railroad locomotives, and more recently for the manufacture of iron, for which purpose it is employed on an immense scale. In 1840, there were no anthracite furnaces in full and successful operation. There are now forty furnaces in blast, many of them of the largest class.-Within the last three years eighteen rolling mills have been erected, which consume hundreds of thousands of tons of coal annually. This branch of business, so important in a national view, is destined to increase rapidly, as the demand for railroad iron increases in almost every section of our country. It is only by collecting details and uniting them, that the extent and importance of the coal trade are made apparent. It has already more than trebled the coasting trade of Philadelphia, and pays annually a freight on the shipments coastwise from this port, of more than a million of dollars. If this trade is of such importance in this period of its comparative infancy, what will it be in its full growth?

About the year 1837, a report was made to the government, by MAJ. BACHE, of the Topographical Engineers, on the subject of an artificial harbor or breakwater at Cape May, in which he states, that the INSURABLE INTEREST CREATED

BY THE COAL TRADE PASSING AROUND CAPE MAY ALONE, ALREADY AMOUNTS TO MORE THAN TWENTY-TWO MILLIONS OF DOLLARS PER ANNUM, estimating merely the vessels in ballast coming after it, and the value of the vessel and cargo carrying it to the various ports at which it is wanted. Many of these vessels bring us supplies from the ports they come from, at merely a nominal freight, instead of ballast, plaster, fish, lumber, salt and other articles required for consumption in the interior, which add materially to the resources of the canals and railroads.

In England, coal appears to have been first used as fuel, about the close of the 12th century. In 1239, Henry III. granted a charter to the burgesses of Newcastle to dig for coal, which is the first legal mention of the article on record. As early as 1140, we find among the Leges Burgorum, an enactment giving special privileges to the inbringers of fuel, which is described as being "wood, turves and peats." The English coal trade, which now amounts to forty millions of tons annually, may indicate to us something of what we have reason to predict in our future career.

The following table shows the imports of foreign coal into the United States, from 1821 to 1846 inclusive:

The canals and railroads leading to the coal mines of Pennsylvania, have cost $26,720,000.

If to these we add the Delaware and Hudson Canal, 108 miles long, and rail road 24 miles, at a cost of $3,250,000, and the Morris Canal 182 miles long, constructed to carry coal to New York at a cost of $4,000,000, we have the sum total of the means of transportation at the cost of $34,970,000-and the total length of canals, 417 miles, and railroads, 473 miles.

The coal trade gives employment to a very great number of persons. Indeed, nearly all the cost of the article is the result of labor. In its locality it is worth only from 25 to 50 cents per ton; averaging 35 cents per ton. But in all the operations connected with mining and transportation, a vast amount of labor is employed. We must take into account, not only the miners, and the boatmen and brakemen on the canals and railroads, and the hands on board the transporting vessels, and the cartmen at the places of delivery, but also the thousands employed in making the necessary railroads and canals, the locomotives, and stationary engines, the boats, &c. &c.

If we divide the twenty-seven years that have elapsed since anthracite coal was first brought into use, into three periods of nine years each, it will be seen that the total supply from all the mines in the first period, ending with the close of 1828, was

Second period, ending in 1837,

Third period, ending with 1846,

Showing the annual average receipts for the first nine

years to have been

Second period,

Third period,

239,845 tons. 3,829,829 11,549,061 "

26,648 " 454,534 1,283,229 "