The Perrysburg journal. [volume] (Perrysburg, Ohio) 1853-1861, 1854-07-08
THE PERRYsBURGI JOURNAL.


Harris, of the Cleveland Herald, has been
taking run through the Western States
His letters home are filled with the results of
his observations. In his last, from La Sale,
! Illinois, he speaks of what he saw and heard
in st. Louis. We thought of making a
synopsis, but find it impossible to abridge
his notes without depriving the reader of
much that is interesting The extract
below will repay perusal from the view it
gives of the real condition of public senti-
ment in Missouri on the topics that now
agitate the public mind;
The Public Schools of st. Louis are mod
eled after those Of Eastern cities, and are
good The Churches are numerous, but not
extravagantly expensive. The Cathedral,
though magnificent twenty years ago, now
appears small and plain amid the tall sur
rounding business blocks The warehouses
and the Wholesale stores are very large, and
the Tobacco warehouses OF enormous extent.
Belchers Sugar Refinery is one of the most
extensive establishments in st. Louis, and
single shot tower rises like a monumental
shaft in the midst of the city. A little
north of the city is the most extensive Iron
Works in the West, and manufactures of
various kinds send up smokes inevery direc-
ton. The growth of st. Louis for few
years past has been uneXampled, and the
prices of real estate have had IA balloon ten
dency Lands two miles and half from the
city. which changed hands dozen years ago
at $50 per acre. now sell for country seats
at s95 900; and city lots are equally up, with
higher prospect. There is wealth, substan-
tial capital. and reliable business to back st.
Louis, and her natural commercial advanta-
ges, have hitherto been unrivalled. But this
- Age of Iron will cut off some of those
advantages, unless her citizens hasten to con
IStruct artificial avenues for steam. She has
but a single railroad and that completed only
some forty miles westward, and not doing
business enough to pay the cost Of running
it. 1t has the high sounding name of Pacific
Railroad but the free State Iowa boasts that
she will complete her link in the road to
California across her broad lands from the
Mississippi to the Missouri at Council Bluffs,
before the slave -paralyzed Missouri extends
her Pacific Railroad even to her own capi-
tall Iowa will do it. That young free State
is already as much ahead of old slave cursed
Missouri in enterprise, energy, public inn
provements and prosperity, as Ohio trans
cends Kentucky. The railroads leading
east and north, which strike the Mississippi
above st. Louis and will soon tap the Mis-
souri, several hundred miles up, cannot fail
to divert to the Commercial Emporiums
of the Atlantic a considerable portion of the
travel and trade of the Northwest, so long
monopolized by the great Central City of the
Rivers.
The subject Of slavery is discussed with
great freedom by Missourians, and its blight
ing effects on st. Louis and the State are
universally admitted. Although it exists in
its mildest form, the non-slaveholderS in st.
Louis and most portions of the State out
numbering the Shareholders more than five
to one, the institution rests like an incubus
on the whole people. 1t is felt, it is crushing,
and how to shake it off is the question:
Intelligent Missourians, we'll qualified to
judge. assure us that could the question of
gradual emancipation be fairly and properly
submitted to the vote of the people of the
State, it would carry by large minority
The position and course Of Col. Benton on
the subject of the acquisition of Texas, his
opposition to the the schemes of the ultra
slave propagandists and nullifierS of the
South, and his fearless and powerful denun-
citation of the repeal of the Missouri Com
promise and the traitorous designs concocted
by Atchison of Missouri, Mason of Virgin
MIA, Brown of Mississippi, and Butler Of
South Carolina, and pushed forward by their
tool Douglas, have infused most liberal