The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1859-10-03
water and Railway Means.of Transports.

statement of the export trade of New Or
leans is given by the Boston american Rail
,eay Times. showing how it has increased from
67 6s, 7ei in 1853, to Si00.350 .69s in 1850 After
giving this statement, the Times remarks that,
in 1854 and '55, when, with other causes, the
competition of the railroads leading East from
the Western cities diminished the river ton
mage in the Mississippi Valley, and, conse-
quently, lessened the quantity and value of
domestic produce exported from New Orleans,
the opinion-espeeially among ultra railroad
men-grew up that the lines of rail leading
East 10 the ocean would divert the carrying
trade from the rivers emptying South into the
Gulf; that New Orleans would cease to be
:. great entrepot of the produce of the up
river country, when to the cities OF the Hud.
son, the Delaware, and the Patapsco. the iron
ways would be thus preferred as outlets; and
that thus being cut elf from the trade of the
Mississippi river and its branches, New Or
leans, TO protect and preserve Il investments
made within her limits, would be constrained
10 build great lines of railroads penetrating
far inland, particularly in the region West Of
the Mississippi. The Times then proceeds to
show how, the completion of the road pro-
ceeded, it became manifest that tchtle tie pas
seHger tfareI tcas abandoning the boats for The
locomotive trains, the HAIRY treightS acre return
ing 10 the teater as the cheapest means Of trans
portatton.
The n. o. Daily Delta confirms these views
of the Times, and refers 10 the period of what
il calls the railroad mania, when all the ora
tors predicted that if New Orleans did not
embark in the same system, its trade would be
fatally destroyed, and the exact time was cal
culated when every barrel of flour, hogshead
of tobacco, and bale of cotton, ins ;ead OF float
ing quietly down the Father of Waters, would
he hurrying with headlong speed, over val
leys and mountains, at the tail of the iron
horse One very practical and intelligent
gentleman in New Orleans made a speech
about that time, in which he declared his be-
lief that there were those in his audience who
would live to see the Mississippi converted into
a horse pond or a mill race. The old Father of
Floods must have been sorely tempted by such
scandal TO break over the levees of New Or
leans and sweep the whole town into the Gulf,
but the great always patient as they are
powerful. MAHoMET, as might have been safe
~ eonjectured, has gone TO the mountain, in
stead of the mountain coming TO MAHOMET,
and the railroads which were to tap the Mis-
sissippi, have become tributary to its great
ness, furnishing the people of the interior the
means of getting their produce to its banks,
and preventing the abstraction OF large force
from the culture of plantations and farms to
haul TO the river. The idea OF carrying hogs
heads of sugar, tobacco, cotton, bacon, flour,
&C. eight and nine hundred miles over artifi-
cial roads, constructed at an expense of ten
and twenty thousand dollars per mile, and re-
quiring enormous sums 10 keep them in order,
has been pretty thoroughly exploded. The
Delta says it was proved by railroad figures
that most of the cotton of North Mississippi
and Alabama would prefer to go to Charleston
by the railroads, but by railroad experience it
turns out from the annual statement of the
Memphis cotton market, that, during the last
year there We're only six hundred bales of cot
ton sent to Charleston by the railroad and all
the rest of the cotton came New Orleans by
water. This is only one of a thousand proofs
that for heavy freights water is the cheapest
means of trans portation. Virginia should bear
this in mind, and complete her canal, which is
the ONLY means of competing successfully for
the Western trade. Railroads for travel but,
for mineral and agricultural treasures, one
canal is equal to twenty railroads.