The Evansville daily journal. [volume] (Evansville, Ia. [i.e. Ind.]) 1848-1862, 1856-12-13
Public Credit and Public Works.

Advocate, for emitting to notice the three
columns Of respects which it paid to the
Journal, in its last weeks issue. We lost our
number Of the Advocate, before it was read,
and are indebted 10 the editor Of the Enqui-
rer for repairing the loss, and calling our at
tention to the subject. That part of our ar
ticIe in relation to reputation, which the
Advocate exposes as absurd and inconsistent,
was only a paraphrase Of the argument of
our City Council, and was designed by us,
not as n serious statement Of the question,
but for home applicalion-to hold upa mir
ror before the eyes Of certain parties, that
they might see their own attitudes. They
were positions we had no desire or ambition
to assume ourselves. The editors COM
ments on that head we turn over to the
care of our friends of the City Council.
To discuss properly those propositions,
which were our own suggestions, requires
columns of space; and we find it difficult to
induce our busy population to give US the
time to read any article of more than three
st ckfulls in length. Our contemporary will,
therefore, not deem it a want of respect, or
lack Of disposition to discuss the subject with
him, If we do not follow him through the
wlole progress Of his argument; which would
b. very pleasant employment, if we had space
and time. If the positions and inductions of
the Advocate were correct, and all the world
thought as it does, the whole wcrld would be
Mount Vernon, without life or enterprise;
and we hold Mount Vernon to be most ex-
ceent illustration of the effects Of the doc
trines of it's wise men as set forth by the
Advocate. If they are satisfied with the OPP
erations Of their theories the world has no
right to quarrel with them for maintaining
and acting upon their convictions.
Our own positions are more than sustained
by the examples to which We alluded and
hundreds of others could have been adduced,
In supp )rt Of them. To maintain that a COM
munity of IA 900 inhabitants, whose gross
earnings annually, are from S3OOOOU0 to
St,OOO0OO, are oppressed by debt of $780,
900; and could not pay S8OUOOO in ten or
twenty years, is sentiment too much tine
tured with !ogysm to travel with the rest O.
the world in this fast age. 1t will create ev-
erywhere smile, but in the bottom of the
Pocket"
In 1913 or 40, Savannah, then containing
twelve or fifteen Thousand inhabitants-oue-
third of whom were black ''chattels'--and
with white population of only eight or ten
tholslni, began to extend her iron arms in
to the interior to grasp something that should
bring back life and energy to her decaying
Commerce. She was situated on Il high
sandy bluff, twelve or fifteen miles from sea,
on a little river not larger than Green river,
and navigable only one hundred miles for q
few months in the year; and at whose mouth
was a difficult bar forbidding the entrance of
large ships ana attording not water enough to
bring any vessels of respectable size within
some miles of her wharves. 10 the West
and South she was hemmed in, by wide and
uninhabitable swamps; on the East were the
opposite marshes Of the river. To the North
stretched an unlimited pine barren. The
sources of her former prosperity had been cut
off by the completion Of the Augusta and
Charleston Railroad that took from her the
trade OF the upper river, and carried it TO a
rival. Her stores and her houses became
tenantleSS, and were rapidly falling to decay
Grass grew in her streets, and her levee be-
came as silent almost as the surrounding pine
forests. At that PERIOD Mr.. Money Bags
who is our cotemporary's philosopher tc
determine the practical questions in the sci
ence of DOltical economicS-would not have
given 100000 for the whole place, and all
it contained beside it's movable "chattes."
the Bottom Pocket" doctrine had prevailed
its buildings ere this, would have been desert
ed, and have fallen, and would now he cover
cd with its movable sands, and its former sitt
subject of conjecture.
Luckily. at this period Of her decline, shc
parted with an old fogy council, and sought
wiser counsels than Mr.. Money Bags with his
figures of arithmetic, and calculations found
ed upon the past. She launched boldly into
the sea Of credit, and put courage and sa-
gacity at the helm. She projected railroads
and began to issue her bonds, and she con-
tinued to utter them, till they reached the
sum- ion't he frightened old foges the
sum of 280O,OO0M!!!-all OF which she in.
vested in canals and railroads Beside which
she has debt for city improvements of more
than 100000. A community with little
more than half the white population OIL
Evansville now, in 1848 and since has bold
ly assumed debt of 100000, the annual
interest on which is $4,000 as much O.