Saint Paul weekly Minnesotian. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1858-1859, 1858-09-11
Shipments of Produce from Minnesota
The Mississippi and the Railroads.

We find in the Pioneer and Democrat OF
Yesterday, the Sth inst, the following para
graph
Messrs. Quevillon & Co., of West St. Paul,
YESTERDAY shipped TO St Louis two hundred
and seventy five barrels of Neshammock 20
tatoes This is the first shipment of this
popular esculent from Minnesota this season,
and our neghbors across the river claim some
credit for their enterprise in leading Oft in this
business.
The last sentence of the above para
graph is scarcely correct. 1t does not do JUS
tice 10 the Export Business of Minnesota in
the Produce line the present season.
There lave been shipments of produce to
the ports below, from some points even high
up on the Minnesota river From the
towns all along the Mississippi river, below
Us. as we are informed, the steamboats, have
been conveying different Minnesota products,
including Potatoes, to the Southern markets.
Point Prescott. in Wisconsin, and Point
Douglas and the city of Hastings, in MINES
ota. all three towns at or near the mouth of
the st. Croix, have doue considerable in this
Export Trade.
At Hastings in particular, the business Of
sending Wheat, Oats and Potatoes to St. Louis,
has been, as we learn, a large one. Large
amounts of good Canada Club Wheat have
been disposed of by the farmers of the heavy
agricultural region back of Hastings, TO ship
pers Oh the levee in that city, for 75c. per
bushel, cash. They have likewise found a
market for Oats fer shipment, at from 80 to
So cent, per bushel, cash and for Potatoes
at 30 cents. The steamboats, going down,
otherwise empty, and with the current quick
", can afford to take freight Southwark at
very low figure. Thus, from Hastings, Tor
Oats cents; for Wheat cents; and for Po-
tatoes 10 cents per bushel, are, we under
stand, the ruling freight figures Of those ar
ticles OF produce from Hastings to st. Louis.
What do these facts show? Do they not
indicate plainly that while old Mississippi
runs and is fixed fact that Minnesota farm
ers need not, even after our own home market
shall have been entirely supplied by their,
despair of finding other markets for their
produce, at re1nunerative prices (allowing for
the superior yield Of our virgin lands and
that too, without waiting for our projected
system of Railroads to be built. When those
Roads are finished and in operation, they will
be only so far important to the farmer in dis
posing Of his surplus produce, that they will
convey it from the far interior beyond one
days journey fol Il team, to the towns on The
Great River
AS Governor Ramsey intimated in his re-
cent speech at the Cable Celebration, the
Mississippi is Natures Grand Erie Canal,
which God has digged for US wide and deep,
and given TO us forever free of toll.
That which the State of New York has
constructed at an aggregate cost of more
than a million o. dollars computing first
cost, interest, repairs enlargement and tolls
to transport tie heavy freights to the seaboard
and the grossor values of commerce back to
the interior in return, is before the eyes of
the people here in Minnesota as a free gift
from the Creator.
Flour and Grain-artcles of great weight and
bulk in p, oportion to their values, and in
which competition forbds much margin of
profit for the producer in the price to the con-
sumer-we hold that our Erie Canal will al
ways defy Railroads TO compete with it in
cheapness, or, when descending, in speed also.
So in regard to the heavy articles of con-
sumption which we may desire from the
Tropics, or the heavy manufactures which
we cannot supply BIZ our own resources and
stil-these will come to US cheaper by the
river than they ever can by the Railroads
when they are built.
passenger business; and freights desiring quick
transit, in which time is the great object in
delivery; and light but precious articles on
whose great values in little bulk the Rail-
road toll is hardly felt as burden-these
will take the Railroads; but sugars and gro
ceries generally; hardware and machinery;
heavy staple dry goods; heavy drugs, and
building materials the cotton to supply
our future factories; the bituminous coal from
Iowa and Illinois-these will come to us by
the river nearly exclusively; just as our flour
and grain and potatoes and wool and manu-
featured lumber, will seek the south almost
exclusively by the same great toll-free Canal
1t seems to US, that in the excitement
about Railroads, we have in a measure lost
sight of the superior advantages that the pos
session of the Mississippi as means of cheap
transportation confers upon US. Fifty main
line Railroads running Southwark could not
compensate us for its loss, if suddenly it should
happen that its bottom dropped out and its
foods were poured down upon the Celestial
Empire of the Chinese on the other side of
the world instead of into the Gulf of Mexico.
For the Mississippi does not wear out like
Railroads do; enormous speed does not rack
its track; fire does not burn its viaducts nor
bridges nor do floods destroy them neither
are there tow paths to wash away nor locks to
be repaired; nor (best of alp is there requir-
ed an army of officials to be kept in pay to
manage it and to kept in order From St.
Paul to the Gulf for two thousand miles if
rolls food of waters, with scarcely an OBJ
structiOn to their free navigation over this
whole immense space. Dispense with river
like this in the commerce of the world |!
Dispense by Railroads with the Mississippi
We assert boldly that when all our Railroads
which are or may be projected in Minnesota,
are constructed, they will owe their chief ad-
vantage as freight carriers, to their being
feeders to or conduits from the Great River
SAY, gather Europe's royal rivers all
Gather their water in one ocean mass,