Various manufactures are springing up in all the new states, which will be noticed under their proper heads.
The number of merchants and traders is very great in the Valley of the Mississippi, yet mercantile business is rapidly increasing.--Thousands of the farmers of the West, are partial traders. They take their own produce, in their own flat boats, down the rivers to the market of the lower country.
_Frontier class of Population._ The rough, sturdy habits of the backwoodsmen, living in that plenty which depends on God and nature, have laid the foundation of independent thought and feeling deep in the minds of western people.
Generally, in all the western settlements, three classes, like the waves of the ocean, have rolled one after the other. First comes the Pioneer, who depends for the subsistence of his family chiefly upon the natural growth of vegetation, called the "range," and the proceeds of hunting. His implements of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his efforts directed mainly to a crop of corn, and a "truck patch." The last is a rude garden for growing cabbage, beans, corn for roasting ears, cucumbers and potatoes. A log cabin, and occasionally a stable and corn crib, and a field of a dozen acres, the timber girdled or "deadened," and fenced, are enough for his occupancy. It is quite immaterial whether he ever becomes the owner of the soil. He is the occupant for the time being, pays no rent, and feels as independent as the "lord of the manor." With a horse, cow, and one or two breeders of swine, he strikes into the woods with his family, and becomes the founder of a new county, or perhaps state. He builds his cabin, gathers around him a few other families of similar taste and habits, and occupies till the range is somewhat subdued, and hunting a little precarious, or, which is more frequently the case, till neighbors crowd around, roads, bridges and fields annoy him, and he lacks elbow-room. The pre-emption law enables him to dispose of his cabin and cornfield, to the next class of emigrants, and, to employ his own figures, he "breaks for the high timber,"--"clears out for the New Purchase," or migrates to Arkansas or Texas, to work the same process over.