The Chief of the United States Bureau of Statistics has recently issued the first number of a quarterly which promises to be very useful, It forme a kind of statistical abstract of the trade of the United and comprises in addition returns rel immigration and culars of the trade of other country merly the trade returns of the Stal issued monthly, and there is per hay disadvantage in publishing them only once a quarter; but this may be in some measure compensated for by greater completeness and better basis for comparisons, The tables for the year ended June 30tb, 1877, and for the eleven preceding years, which are also comprised in the report, reveal the fact that, between 1873 and 1876, the total imports of the States fell off no lees than $187,000,000. Last trade year, however, there was 'a slight recovery, which was continued for the first Aomestic produce and' manufactures, have quarter of the current year, The exports of
shown remarkable steadiness over the same period, but did not reach last year the values of 1874. The average export of the last four years was $22,000,000 higher than for the Tour years 1865 to 1868, so that the trade of the States is in this direction making very considerable pro grow. A certain portion of this progress is, moreover, in manufactured articles, the exports of cotton having been smaller in value the last few years than they were ton years ago. The exports of grain, we except Indian corn, have also been less uniformly excessive recently than might have been suppered, and, gold and. silver bullion fell off considerably in 1876 and 1877. On the other hand, such articles as copper and brass manufactures, fire-arm! cotton fabrics, and ud leather goods, all show a more or less marked progress, 1873, when the trade Yet this growth is by uniform; and in such articles others of the like kind, in whic of invention was supposed to have the States the market over all competitors,
instances there is oven a marked decline, and figui fitful kind, In some the exports of unenumerated manufacture tides cannot be said to have made any real progress since 1865. There is, therefore, no sign in these trade returns that Protection is doing good to the Union, but rather the reverse, for it is not unfair to the larger export of some of the manufactured articles which is noticeable since 1873 la to some extent @ forced export. There is no market for the goods at home, and they are disposed of at any price in any market that turns up, This seems to be particularly the case with regard to the United States' European business, nearly the whole of which—barring such articles og firearms, to which a dial activity has been. given by European wars—is composed of articles of consumption and raw produce, such as pork, bacon and hams, cheese, oil, lard, fish, preserved meats, faite, breadstufis, tallow, and lumber. There la a very remarkable increase in the exports of refined sugar, however, which tends to prove that French bountion have not been the sole destroyers of the English refiners' busine:
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.