The daily dispatch. [volume] (Richmond [Va.]) 1850-1884, 1867-08-24
The Grand Work Of the Day.

The Grand Work Of the Day.
The Chesapeake and Ohio railroad is the
grand work Of the day for Richmond. 1t
has been most cheering to see the counties
of West Virginia SO heartily cooperating
with us in the noble enterprise. The solid
county Of Kanawha has, with surprising
nnanimity, shouldered the large burthen
of FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOL
LARS allotted to her. The general zeal
exhibited by her people-nay, all the citi-
Gems of the superb Kanawha valley-in
behalf of the great improvement is credit
able to their sagacity, to their energy, and
their liberality. Let Richmond but emu
late this spirit--let her but display like
sagacity and enterprise in the support of
her own interests, and that grand artery
of communication between the Virginia
tide and the Ohio, which has been the OBJ
iect of the labors, the hopes, nay the very
prayers, of Virginia for thirty years, will
be most assuredly accomplished.
Shall we not emulate this fine example
from the West7 Nay, shall we not sur
pass it?s Most assuredly We should. Our
interests are greater than those Of our
western friends, and our e1ertion In the
cause should be all the more active. We
shall soon have the opportunity of show
ing our capability to appreciate our true
interests as well as to display our consist
ency and force in maintaining them.
Never was there such an opportunity
for Richmond. Never had any community
such chance to effect communication
between themselves and the wealthIest
and most powerful part of the great west.
/, is the accepted time. We have the
hearty cooperation Of that West Virginia
which will not long submit to the isolation
and obstruction in which it has been
restrained, while in all directions, north
and south of it, ways are opened and COM
merce is flowing to and for, enriching
communities and developing vast wealth
in lands not possessed of 1.-THE of its
resources. That pent-up region will make
other ways and other communications LOT
itself if we withdraw from cooperating
with its whole. souled people. 1nhabiting
one of the richest valleys in the world,
whether we consider its agricultural or Its
mineral wealth, they have no outlet but
westwardly down the Ohio. They are q
hundred miles from railroad on either
hand and while Charleston, kanawha, is
only three hundred miles from Richmond,
the traveller must make a journey of about
sevcn hundred and Jifty miles to pass from
the one to the other! This makes COM
munites who ought to be intimate, and
TO trade with one another, as much
strangers as though they were separated
by an ocean, Why is this 7 That these
communities living in the same State
funtil recently )-dwelling upon continu-
Gus line of depression-a line of such
easy grades that the streams that flow to
the Atlantic and the Mississippi find their
sources in the same vicinity-a line ex-
tending across from the Chesapeake to the
Ohio, marked by such easy grades as to be
the route of the buffalo and the Indian, be-
fore us, and to be selected by our own great
mon Of the past generation as the most
direct and gradual Of all the natural
routes from the Atlantic to the great rivers
Of the West-that these communities, we
repeat, should not before this have been
in most intimate communication, by the
most improved and rapid mode of trans
portation, is astonishing is disgrace to
Virginia and to us all.
We now have the opportunity of making
this communication. No community, we
repeat, has yet been favored with such an
opportunity. We have in the Central
railroad half of the route finished. The
State has expended three and half mil
lions upon the road beyond the terminus
of the Central. This expenditure is given
to US if we 60 on with the work. Five
millions of dollars will take it to the head
of steamboat navigation on the kanawha,
where we meet the trade of the Ohio to
the extent which that trade can be con-
trolled by steamboat transportation-the
best in the world for freights. Thence to
the Ohio, little over hundred miles,
the road, with the aid of the immense bu-
siuess that will be thrown upon it at the
head Of steamboat navigation, will finish
itself.
For IN outlay Of five or six millions,
then, we shall reach the Ohio, and there
revel in the vast trade Of the West, which
other communities have expended their
twenty, thirty, and fifty millions to OBJ
tain.
How can any man in Richmond hest
tate How is it possible there should be
two opinions! There are not two opinions
as to tie importance Of the connection acith
the Ohio. But men will not fail-as men
never fail-to find fault with the manner
and the plan of doing ,ctat everybody agrees
ought to be done: So PERyERsE IS HUMAN
NATURE. There is but one plan We believe
which could be unanimously approved !;
and that is the plan. by which the whole
work would be done by the money Of other
people, and in which the benefcaries
would pay nothing and get all the good
from the enterprise! That acould be popu.
lar acith the beaefciarieS' Yet we are not
sure. We rather suspect the very men
who would oppose any other scheme would