million dollars, the duty on which covers into the Treasury the large sum of from 37 millions to $41,000,000 annually.

The authorities describe the sugar-growing region of Louisiana as lying on both sides of the Mississippi River, from about sixty miles below New Orleans, to about 200 miles above, including a tract along the banks of the Red River, embracing the parishes of Avoyelles and Rapides, and the level lands of Vermillion and Saint Martin. The average area annually cultivated in sugar-cane in Louisiana has not exceeded 150,000 acres, or about half of an ordinary county.

But the sugar limit is not confined to Louisiana. In ten other States cane, with ordinary cultivation and appliances, has been found to give fair returns, while the reports of yields in the Gulf regions of Texas give promise of great future results. Much of Florida bordering the Gulf-coast is indisputably well adapted to profitable sugarculture. It would be very difficult, if indeed at all practicable, to *secure accurate reports of the cane-product outside of Louisiana, in which it is a leading staple carefully noted; but, relying upon the United States censuses for 1860 and 1870, the following is the exhibit of cane-products in the Southern States in the years 1859 and 1869 :

Louisiana lands within the sugar-range are cheap and abundant. It is stated by competent authority that sugar-lands, on the navigable rivers and bayous, may be purchased at from $15 to $20 per acre, while they have a capacity for the production of 2,000 to 4,000 and even 5,000 pounds of sugar, with a proportionate turn-out of molasses. SUGAR PRODUCT OF LOUISIANA, 1823-1877.

The average weight of the hogshead is rockoned at 1,137 pounds net.

The methods employed in the culture of sugar have been of such a character that there may be said to have been a mimimum of production, considering what might have been done with good culture and thoroughly scientific manipulation of the cane. While Louisiana gives 1,200 to 1,800 pounds of sugar to the acre (taking the last three seasons as the standard), the West India product is given at 3,000 to 5,000 pounds, and that of the East Indies often runs up to 7,000.

The product of sugar to the acre, through what is known among sugar planters as deterioration, has been rather lessening than increasing of late years. While the exhaustion of land and the use of unsuitable mineral fertilizers, with bad seasons and overflows of the Mississippi, have contributed seriously to discourage planters of sugar, yet the demand for this staple is so enormous, and the price of the product customarily so high, that very great profits are necessarily consequent upon its successful culture.

One hundred acres of cane, averaging 60,000 ponnds per acre, should yield 571,428 pounds of sugar, at 8 cents per pound, and 380,952 pounds of molasses, at 4 cents per pound; total, $60,951.32. The expenses of cultivation and management and the cost of manufacture should not be more than $18,951.32, leaving a net profit of $42,000, or $40,000 more than is now derived from 100 acres of cane on an average. These considerations give some idea of the enormous losses inflicted upon the sugar-interest and upon the country by unthrifty methods of production. The special report of the Commissioner of Agriculture traces the following deductions as the net result of his comprehensive inquiry into the subject:

1. That the United States is paying annually to other nations immense sums of money for a staple article of consumption which, the proper encouragement and support being afforded, might be produced at home.

2. That the production of sugar in Louisiana, our chief source of domestic supply, was about 63 per cent. less in 1876 than in 1861, while at the same time in the years of largest production a very insignificant part of the whole body of canebearing lands have at any time been under cultivation.

3. That the system of sugar production heretofore followed has not been of a character calculated to produce the best results, great losses having been entailed on account both of the agricultural methods and the mechanical appliances used in extracting the saccharine matter, the loss through unscientific handling of the bagasse alone amounting to at least 40 per cent.

4. That an improved system of labor, involving the division and the cultivation of smaller tracts by individual owners, and a more thorough and scientific handling of the cane, would very largely increase the sugar product and go far toward keeping pace with the annually-increasing demand of the whole country.

5. That successive plantings of the same seed-cane have resulted in a deterioration of the stock that demands serious and immediate attention.

6. That there are immense tracts of unoccupied and abandoned sugar-lands in Louisiana which are purchasable at low rates.

7. That the absorption of these lands by small cultivators depends upon the protection afforded by a good levee system, the establishment of central factories, and the construction of transportation ways.

8. That a very large area, heretofore highly productive, cannot be safely worked on account of inundations arising from the bad condition of levees.

9. That the new system of ownership of small farms, which is now being encouraged, will give growth to individual independence, draw around itself educational and refining influences, and build up and energize new and thriving communities such as exist wherever self-reliant and intelligent labor flourishes.

It is also urged by the Southern correspondents of the Agricultural Department that protection of sugar-producing lands from overflow by a levee system is indispensably necessary, and that such a protective system can only be obtained by the active pecuniary co-operation of the Federal Government.

SUGAR PRODUCTION OF THE WORLD.

AN eminent English authority gives the following tables showing the production of cane and beet-root sugar in 1875 in the producing countries of the world :

CROPS OF CANE-SUGAR, IN ROUND NUMBERS.

The highest and lowest prices for raw sugar in the New York market from 1825 to 1877 are given elsewhere; also the consumption of sugar per capita in various countries.

Brief History of the Continental Money, the French Assignats, and the Confederate Currency.

THE first issue of so-called continental currency to meet the expenses of the Revolutionary War, was dated May 10, 1775, but not circulated for some months after; and for about one year, or until the total issues exceeded nine millions of dollars, the bills passed at their nominal value.

The following table exhibits the total issues of continental money from first to last, according to a statement made by the Register of the United States Treasury, in 1790 :

The rate of exchange at which the continental bills were taken for hard money was stated by Mr. Pelatiah Webster, writing in 1783, as follows:

On the 31st of May, 1781, the continental bills ceased to circulate as money, but were bought up for speculation at various prices from 100 for one up to 1000 for one. Says Mr. Webster :

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The depreciation of continental money never stopped the circulation of it. As long as it retained any value at all, it passed quick enough; and would purchase hard money or anything else, as readily as ever, when the exchange was 200 for one, and when every

hope, or even idea, of its being ultimately redeemed at nominal value had entirely vanished.

"The facility of raising ways and means, in the early part of the war by issues of paper, led to much extravagance in the commissary department, and prevented the establishment of a sound system of finance. It is said that when a proposition was before Congress to establish a regular revenue system, one member exclaimed, "Do you think, gentlemen, that I will consent to load my constituents with taxes, when we can send to our printer, and get a wagon-load of money, one quire of which will pay for the whole !"

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The statement has been frequently made that no provision whatever for redemption of the continental currency was ever made. This is erroneous. By the act "making provision for the debt of the United States," August 4, 1790, Congress enacted that the bills of credit issued by authority of the United States should be funded in the loan providing for the full amount of the domestic debt, at the rate of one hundred dollars in the said bills for one dollar in specie. (1 Statutes at Large, 140.) This provision was the fruit of a protracted controversy in which the arguments for the public faith on the one side, and on the other the fact that the original holders of the bills could reap no benefit, that they had nearly all fallen into the hands of speculators, and that it was a sheer impossibility to redeem them, so enormous was their amount in proportion to the population and feeble resources of the country, were urged with great force.

The history of the French assignats has been too frequently told, and is too familiar to require repetition here. Briefly, the assignats were paper money, issued by the French Government in 1790, and the following years, based on the security of the national domains, and irredeemable at any fixed period. Following this issue, notwithstanding the enormous extent and value of the public lands pledged as their security, the assignats began to depreciate almost immediately, but were kept up to 90 per cent by various expedients until 1792. The first issue was 1200 millions of francs, which was swollen by successive issues to the enormous amount of 45,578,000,000 francs, or $9,115,600,000. The most stringent laws, coupled with the severest penalties, were enacted to give the assignats forced circulation as legal tender, but they soon fell to 60 per cent, and in 1795 were worth only 18 per cent. At last, in 1796, the whole issue was recalled by law, and redeemed in mandats at one thirtieth the face value of the assignats. The mandats enabled the holders to enter at once into the possession of the public lands at a fixed price. In spite of this, the mandats quickly fell to one seventieth of their nominal value, and at length, in July, 1796, the law was passed which authorized the mandats to be taken at their current value, resulting, of course, in the rapid disappearance of the notes.

THE CONFEDERATE CURRENCY.

[Compiled from Pollard's Southern History of the War-Currency of the Confederate States, by Wm. Lee, and the Richmond Enquirer.]

BEFORE the outbreak of the civil war in 1861, the amount of specie held in the vaults of the banks in the eleven seceding States was about thirty millions of dollars. At the same time, the paper circulation outstanding in the shape of bank notes in those States was about fifty millions of dollars. In addition to this currency it was estimated by the financial authorities at that time, that the specie in circulation among the people of the South did not exceed twenty millions of dollars. Thus the approximate amount of currency of all

kinds in the Confederate States was perhaps fifty millions in coin, and a paper circulation of about the same amount.

The first thing that happened when hostilities were fairly begun, was a hoarding of specie in the hands of the people. The thirty millions of specie in the vaults of the banks continued long unemployed. A large part of it was secreted from motives of safety, another part was taken possession of by the Confederate Government, and a small portion captured in the course of military operations by the Federal authorities. Yet a very considerable portion of it was shipped abroad during the war, to pay for munitions of war and other supplies in behalf of the Confederate cause. At any rate, the close of the war found a very small fraction of the thirty millions held by the banks in 1861 still in their possession.

The condition of the currency in the Southern States before their government had begun to put out its flood of Confederate currency, was eminently a healthy one. The banks, it is true, suspended specie payments just before the close of the year 1861; but this suspension was not from any want of ability to take care of their circulation. With only fifty millions of paper in circulation, and at least the same amount of coin in the South, the larger part of which was held by the banks themselves, the latter were quite able to provide for their paper currency. But the suspension of specie payments was resolved upon in self-defence. It was to prevent the certain drain of specie that would have ensued from the large purchases of merchandise at the North and elsewhere, which the prospect of a long war and an increasing embargo would have induced.

One of the first things found out at the South as the war advanced, was that the stimulus of all branches of trade would absorb a large increase of paper circulation. Thus the fifty millions of currency afloat at the outset was quite unequal to the active condition of business brought about by the war. The Confederate Government immediately borrowed from the banks in the form of discounts upon notes drawn by the Confederate Secretary of the Treasury. These loans to the Government were advanced in extra issues of paper money, by the Southern banks themselves. They thus supplied the Government for a time with the sinews of war, and at the same time supplied that deficiency of currency which was stringently felt among the people. Nevertheless these loans ultimately proved the ruin of the banks. The issue of Confederate treasury notes, or irredeemable paper, which, once begun, had to be continually resorted to, soon filled the Southern country with two competing paper mediums. Of these two, the Southern people somehow had an instinct that the Confederate money was the least valuable. As a result, the notes of the Southern banks were hoarded, on that familiar financial principle that of two conflicting currencies the least valuable will drive out of circulation the more valuable. As silver and gold were hoarded at the North, becoming virtually demonetized for years, so the notes of the Southern banks were hoarded at the South, and their place was supplied by the new currency issued in torrents by the Confederate Gov

ernment.

The first emission of paper authorized by the Confederate Congress was an issue of Treasury notes to the amount of one million dollars, to run one year, and to be not less than fifty dollars face value. This act was dated at Montgomery, Alabama, March 9, 1861, and the paper bills were engraved by the National Bank Note Company of New York. Two months later, on the 16th of May, 1861, the Confederate Congress at Montgomery passed another act, authorizing