The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1868-06-12
SOMETHING BETTER THAN MANcHAc.


The St Louis Board of Trade could find
much more profitable employment for its in
tellect and its zeal, even under the relaxing eff
fects of the summer heat, than in holding
special sessions to listen to fanciful praises of
the project of opening Bayou Manchac, and
n passing resolutions blindly indorsing it.
Even the imaginative features of the subject
have no novelty. Speculation about it was
long ago exhausted, and it has not since en-
gagged the serious attention of any practical
and enlightened friend of Western aud South
western trade and navigation. One of the
most injurious drawbacks, however, on the
prosperous development of these great inter-
ests has been a tendency on the part of COM
mtrcial communities in the West and South
west to mediate, with an indolent sort of
preoccupation, on wild and visionary pro-
jects, to the exclusion of expedients perfectly
reasonable and practicable, and all the ele-
ments of which were at hand to assure success
to the intelligence, and energy, and capital
that should organize them. For example,
there has long been vague dream of making
a short cut for Western trade to the Atlantic
by canaling over the sleeps and elevations of
the Allegheny mountains. similar dream
was that of diverting the current of the Ten
nessee river by connecting it'with the Tom
bigbee or Alabama river; and this was pro-
posed in the belief that the Ohio would find a
new outlet to the gulf through its diverted
tributary. These and several other sugges-
tons too puerile in their fancifulness for seri-
Gus mention, have served, like the Manchac
project, to distract commercial attention from
improvements of pressing need and of obvi-
Gus practicability which demanded whatever
OF thought, of effort, and of capital could be
directed towards them. If the ST. Louis
Board of Trade is heartily bent on increasing
the facilities for Western trade through the
lower Mississippi and its natural or artificial
connections with the gulf let them ac-
lively enlist the merchants and producers
of the West in the establishment of a
vast elevator and warehouse system in
New Orleans for transferring and storing
grain; Ill the permanent maintenance of a
deep channel, not less than twenty feet, at
the canals which now afford outlets from New
Orleans to Lake Pontchartrain and to the
Mississippi Sound, or in the construction of
canal below the city for vessels of the heavi-
est draft; in the improvement of the Pontchar-
train and the Mexican Gulf Railroads, and the
completion of the one projected from New
Orleans to Chattanooga; in furnishing iron
hulls for shipping grain in a dry condition,
and in introducing screw propellers for the
through transportation of freight both ways.
There is no dreaminess about these things.
They do not lie in the wilds of idle specula-
ton and pecuniary impossibility. They call
for money, certainly, and for much of it; but
it is equally certain that they would repay at
once, and with immense profit, every dollar
which should be judiciously invested in them.
All this is plain to rejecting observers here,
but they have not the capital necessary to the
prosecution of any of the enterprises referred
TO. Such is not the case in the West. The
merchants and producers of the upper half of
the Mississippi valley can command the
necessary capital, and can secure the success
full application of it, by properly combining
and cooperating tor those purposes. And it
is work in which their interests are pre-emi-
nently concerned, for no other people in the
country would reap so much commercial adj
vantage from it as they. In short, the mer-
chants and producers of the West can in no
other way so well serve their own interests as
in improving New Orleans as the great South |
western emporium for Western produce, and
in making the most which capital, judiciously /
and energetically employed, can make of
routes of Western trade that touch this city. |
The Western company now engaged here in
erecting elevators and building warehouses
for grain are doing more for that trade than |
millions of dollars devoted to opening half a
dozen Manchacs could effect