and she will also distribute. One of the first things she intends
to do is to tap the stream of food, fuel and lumber destined for the
South, and now laid up in the winter in Philadelphia by the closing of
the Delaware, and send it to the Southern consumer by her cheap
water-transport. Connected with this enterprise will be the
multiplication of her steam colliers, ultimately scattering the crop of
breadstuffs to the South Atlantic and Gulf States (if not the Eastern),
and coming home with ballast of the varied iron ores those States abound
in. When Delaware Bay begins to be whitened with the sails of returning
coal-vessels, or lashed with the wheels of steam carriers, bringing in
the oxides and magnetite ores of North Carolina and the hematite and
other varieties of the extreme South, to mix with the rail-brought ores
of interior localities, then Wilmington proposes to be the chosen centre
of industry in cast iron. This production, it is now well understood, is
no longer carried on most advantageously in the neighborhood of any one
great natural deposit of ore. The important thing is to be at a meeting
of all varieties of the metal: chemistry then selects the proportions
for mixture, and the best stock is produced with scarcely any greater
expense than the lowest grade. The situation at the head of Delaware Bay
is one where every choice of the ores can be easily swept together by
rail or water. It also controls fuel, by both means of carriage, from
either of the great anthracite regions--a matter of special importance
in this time of "strikes," as the operatives of both districts rarely
throw up work at the same time. Wilmington thus proposes to obtain its
iron at three dollars per ton less than Pittsburg.

[Illustration: PARLOR-MATCH FACTORY.]

To properly digest these advantages, the city needs a large furnace,
centrally located, to work for all the foundries and forges of the
place. This construction is now being earnestly advocated, and will
doubtless soon take form.

Thus we see the northernmost of the slave-State cities leaping up to
catch first the advantages of perfect commercial union under the new
regime. Affiliated with the South, inspired by the North, we should
watch her as a standard and a type.

Meantime, her labor problem, as a city crammed with proletarians, she
meets with consummate tranquillity. The paternal relations between the
good old Brandywine millers and their journeymen are continued thro