The gross receipts of cotton in New Orleans amount to thirty-three and one-third per cent. of the production of the entire country.  In 1859- 60 the receipts and exports of cotton from New Orleans exceeded two and a quarter millions of bales, the value of which was over one hundred millions of dollars.  In the season of 1871-72 the cotton crop amounted to two million nine hundred and seventy-four thousand bales, one-third of which passed through New Orleans.  A vast amount of other products, such as sugar, tobacco, flour, pork, &c. is received at New Orleans and sent abroad.  Besides this export trade, New Orleans imports coffee, salt, sugar, iron, dry-goods, and liquors, to the average yearly value of seventeen millions of dollars.

In 1878 two hundred and forty-seven million four hundred and twenty-four thousand bushels of grain were received at the Atlantic ports of the United States from the interior.  This great bulk of grain represented a portion only of the cereals actually raised in the whole country.  The largest portion of it was produced in the states tributary to the Mississippi River and its branches.  This statement will give an idea of what might be saved to foreign consumers if a part of this great crop went down the natural water-way to New Orleans.  In the same year, steamboats were freighting barrels of merchandise at fifty cents per barrel for fifteen hundred miles from New Orleans to up-river ports.  This shows at what low rates freights can be transported on western rivers.

Each city has its representative men, and New Orleans has one who has done much to build up the great commercial and transportation interests of the Southwest.  An unassuming man, destitute of means, went to the South many years ago.  Uprightness in dealing with his fellow-man, industry in business, and large and comprehensive views, marked his career.  Step by step he fought his way up from a humble station in life to one of the grandest positions that has ever been attained by a self-made man.  More than one state feels the results of his tireless energy and successful commercial schemes.  He is now the sole proprietor of two railroads, and the owner of a magnificent fleet of steamers which unite the ports of New York and New Orleans with the long seaboard of Texas.

So skilfully has this man conducted the details of the great enterprises he has created, that during a term of many years not one human life has been lost upon sea or land by the mismanagement of any of his numerous agents.  He is now past eighty; but this remarkable man, with his tireless brain, goes persistently on, and within fourteen months past contracted for the building of two fine iron steamers, and nearly completed two more for ocean trade.  A New Orleans paper asserts that within the same period “he has elevated his Louisiana Railroad bed, along its route for twenty miles, above the highest water-mark of overflows, and has converted a shallow bayou between Galveston and Houston, Texas, into a deep stream, navigable for his largest vessels.  On these works he expended over two millions of dollars.”