centre of wealth and industrial power does not keep up, in its western
movement, with the centre of population! nor, if its movement were
coincident, would it be at or near the right point for the
concentration of our domestic and foreign trade, while traversing the
interior of Ohio. If we suppose our foreign commerce equal to one
fifteenth of the domestic, we should add to the thirty-three millions
of the States and Canadas, upward of two millions of foreigners, to
represent our foreign commerce. These should be thrown into the scale
represented by New York. This, with the larger proportion to
population of industrial power remaining in the old States, would
render it certain that the centre of industrial power of our nation
has not traveled westward so far as to endanger, for the present, the
supremacy of the cities central to the commerce of our Atlantic coast.
Until the centre of industrial power approaches a good harbor on the
lakes, New York will continue the best located city of the continent
for the great operations of its commerce. That the centre of wealth
and consequent industrial power is moving westward at a rate not
materially slower than the centre of population, might be easily
proved; but, as those who read this article with interest must be
cognizant of the great flow of capital from the old world and the old
States to the New States, and the rapid increase of capital on the
fertile soil of the new States, no special proof seems to us to be
called for. The centre of power, numerical, political, economical, and
social, is then, indubitably, on its steady march from the Atlantic
border toward the interior of the continent. That it will find a
resting place somewhere, in its broad interior plain, seems as
inevitable as the continued movement of the earth on its axis. The
figures we have submitted of the growth of the principal lake cities
plainly show great power in lake commerce, so great as to carry
conviction to our mind that the _principal city of the continent will
find its proper home and resting-place on the lake border, and become
the most populous capital of the earth_. A full knowledge of the
geography of North America will tend to confirm this conviction in the
mind of the fair inquirer. The lakes penetrate the continent to its
productive centre. They afford, during eight or nine months of the
year, pleasant and safe navigation for steam-propelled vessels. Their
waters are pure and beautifully