The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-05-29

car loadof freight to New York. and wagon load
of freight to Westminster, the car will traverse
the whole distance of two hundred miles before the
wagon has reached the twentieth mile stone Now
when wereflect that but few years ago, we could
communicate commercially only by stages run
ming eight miles an hour, and by heavily laden
wagons travelling some fifteen miles day, and
compare this snailike pace with the rapid locomo-
ton which Railways afford, we can readily under
stand how it is that the larger Commercial centres
have absorbed large proportion of the trade with
the interior, and that while the Commercial En-
porlum selected as the appropriate terminus for
system of Railways constantly extending itself in
various directions, has fourished with extraordi-
nary vigor, the inland townsville former markets
of the Agricultural producer, should have sensibly
declined in Importance and in population For
merly, every rural district of the interior had its
little Commercial centre, where the Farmers for
twenty miles around sold their crops and made
their purchases. The Country trader stood then in
the relation of middle man. either to some more
extensive trader in one of the larger inland towns.
or to the merchant upon the seaboard, and the
consequence was that produce frequently passed
the profits derived by each, before it reached its
legitimate market for home consumption or for
foreign export. Railways have simplifed all this.
They have saved the Agricuturalist the heavy
expenses to which his products were pre-
viously subjected, and the difference between
the cost of merchandise purchased in an
inland town and the price at which it may be
bought at the port of entry. Railways having
diminished the distance in time between the centre
and the circumference of State, and to such de-
gree as to make what was once the Journey of a
day the easy travel of an hour, remote points are
brought into close proximity and we speak ofneigh-
borhoods, not by the distance they may be apart.
but with reference to the facilities afforded us for
reaching them. As those facilities increase the
middle men disappear from the rural districts, and
establish themselves elsewhere for the business of
country trader becomes-with the first whistle of
the locomotive-limited to supplying the casual
wants of the neighborhood, inasmuCh as the far
mer discovers that it is his interest to send his
surplus products direct to a market and to pur-
chase his merchandise where he makes his sales
If however the inland towns and villages have sensi
bly, declined in population, since the introduction
of the Railway system, the landed estates at every
point accessible by rail- have doubled trebled, and
even quadrupled their previous value and if it be
said, that the larger towns have worked an injury
to their rustic cougeners by diminishing their trade
and by drawing off their inhabitants, such result
might reasonably be expected, in an age of pro-
gress, when modern genius has succeeded in ami
hilating space, ''plays the plighted cloud" and
is preparing to accomplish the boast of SHAKs-
PEARE's Puch by putting "a girdle round the earth
in forty minutes