ves involved in the commercial question, for here, as always,
morals and business are intertwined. Was the commercial management of
the North creditable to the Government and an honor to the people? The
surest way to answer such questions is to trace out with some fullness
the commercial and industrial conditions of the North during the four
years of war.

The general reader who looks for the first time into the matter is
likely to be staggered by what statistics seem to say. Apparently they
contradict what he is accustomed to hear from popular economists about
the waste of war. He has been told in the newspapers that business is
undermined by the withdrawal of great numbers of men from "productive"
consumption of the fruits of labor and their engagement as soldiers in
"unproductive" consumption. But, to his astonishment, he finds that the
statistics of 1861-1865 show much increase in Northern business--as,
for example, in 1865, the production of 142 million pounds of wool
against 60 million in 1860. The government reports show that 13 million
tons of coal were mined in 1860 and 21 million in 1864; in 1860, the
output of pig iron was 821,000 tons, and 1,014,282 tons in 1864; the
petroleum production rose from 21 million gallons in 1860 to 128
million in 1862; the export of corn, measured in money, shows for 1860
a business of $2,399,808 compared with $10,592,704 for 1863; wheat
exporting showed, also, an enormous increase, rising from 14 millions
in 1860 to 46 millions in 1863. There are, to be sure, many statistics
which seem to contradict these. Some of them will be mentioned
presently. And yet, on the whole, it seems safe to conclude that the
North, at the close of the third year of war was producing more and was
receiving larger profits than in 1860.

To deal with this subject in its entirety would lead us into the
labyrinths of complex economic theory, yet two or three simple facts
appear so plain that even the mere historian may venture to set them
forth. When we look into the statistics which seem to show a general
increase of business during the war, we find that in point of fact this
increase was highly specialized. All those industries that dealt with
the physical necessities of life and all those that dealt peculiarly
with armies flourished amazingly. And yet there is another side to the
story, for there were other industries that were set back and some that
almost, if not entirely, disappeared. A good insta