New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1868-06-28
THE rExAs oATrIE TRADE.

We have recently made some severe
structures upon the Texas cattle trade with
New Orleans, as conducted upon the Nor
gan line of steamers. Our object was two
fold. First, to call public attention not to
individual instances, but to an organized
system of brutality.
One would hardly suppose that there
could be found in our enlightened commu-
nifty man 50. debased, even by the yellow
haze of gold, as to deliberately send out
upon the high seas, under the blazing heat
of cur tropical sun, shipload after shipload
of cattle, wedged on the main deck like
sardines in box, and without one drop Of
mater or one mo,dtfd Of food provided for
their sllstendnce. The shoi test of these
steamship routes requires about twenty
hours, The usual trips require about sixty.
But when the trips are prolonged to several
days, as they are apt to be by gulf storms,
the consequences are too revolving for
description. Thirty, fifty, and one hundred,
two hundred, sometimes the whole cargo
of three or four hundred cattle, weak from
hunger and thirst and terror, are trampled
aHd crushed to death. Sometimes not
single live animal is found in the blosted
mass. A few years ago a steamer was
lost with all on board from the swaying to
and fro of the halfliving cargo. The Aus
tin, one Of the Morgan steamers, recently
came into port with FIVE feet of water in
her hold. One hundred and nineteen
dead animals were then thrown overheard.
The rest of the cattle, dragged out from
the bloated mass, and gasping with the
last breath of life, their flesh quivering
with fever and parboiled by the intol-
cradle heat, were sent to the New
Orleans market. Here the aabby, stringy,
ard diseased beef from these holocausts to
the steamship King" is served out to our
monopoly-ridden citizens at fIom fifteen 10
twenty-five cents per pound, while the
most savory beef in the world should be
abundant at FIVE cents. Passengers who
pay eighteen dollars on the Morgan ships
from New Orleans to Galveston, little fur
Their than from New York to Boston, describe
the scenes sometimes witnessed on board
as terribly revolving.
The very mention of these faets-and no
one has dared to deny or even to palliate
them-should exclude the guilty perpetra-
tor Of such barbarities from the pale of
civilized society. The very brutes will
rise up in judgment against him. Happily
the Legislature of Louisiana will soon con-
yene. Elsewhere legislation has provided
for the comfort and health Of animal as
we'll as human passengers when trans
ported from place to place. If the Legis-
lature Of New York could, last winter,
make Vanderbilt, the Railroad King"
check Hudson river steamboat baggage on
the Central railroad, we think that the
Legislature of Louisiana will be able to
make the steamship King" treat the brute
creation as civilized man should, and not
as heather.
Another object Of our structures is to
call the attention of the public, and es-
pecially Of the people Of Texas and of New
Orleans, to the enormous tax imposed upon
them by this grinding monopoly, Is it not
generally affirmed that were it not for the
secret opposition of Charles Morgan the
opelousas railroad would long ago have
been extended to the Texas line2 The
PUBLIC SO understood it. Who does not
know that the periodical promises of build
ing these few miles of railroad-only about
one hundred and eighty miles, of which
nearly One-half is graded-are snare and
a delusion? We viii revert to this subject
again.