The New Orleans crescent. [volume] (New Orleans, La.) 1866-1869, 1869-02-26
TIE NEW CONDITIONS AND NEEDS OF
Ngw ORLEANS COMMERCE.

Western cities, of which much has been said
Of late lugubriously or Indignantly IS a posi-
tive evil. There was nothing at any time in
the nature of things to prevent country
merchants and planters up Red River, or
along the Mississippi river at some distance
above this city, from obtaining supplies of
Western produce directly from Che West, in
stead OF receiving them indirectly by a longer
route and by two stages Of transportation, as
for many years the most of them we're in the
habit of doing. The redur.ication Of factor
age and shipment when this business was
done via New Orleans involved increased ex-
penses and delays which we're only willingly
incurred for the sake of real or supposed
compensations derived from the old, estab-
lshed and widely extended system of trade
out of which they grew. In the period re-
ferred to, almost every planter and almost
every country merchant were closely perhaps
inextricably, bound up in business with their
New Orleans factors. As a general rule their
paper was ont with these factors indorse-
ments for year in advance of their crops
or their mercantile collections. Every year
they were pressed by the exigency of re-
plenisliIg the hands of factors as the con-
dition OF entering, with needful supplies,
upon the operations of another year. The
more they helped their city agents and
euarantors the more the latter could help
them, and very naturally they obtained such
Western produce as they required through
the same hands which furnished them with
other facilities
But, as every one convelsant with the CON-
mercial changes to which the events of the
war gave impulse is aware, this system
can hardly lie said to exist longer except in
frsgmentary forms and on a very precarious
basis. There was, in consequence of the
agricultural disasters of 1867, almost com
pleto disruption of the former relations of
planter and factor. The factor could not
longer assist the planter, and the planter,
thrown upon his own resources and favored
by an exceptionally good season, finds himself
in a state of comparative independence where
he can choose his own market Tor both buy
ing aud selling. Formerly, the workings of
reciprocal interests and obligations between
him and his factor constrained both in the
meshes of an informal out indissoluble part
nership. Now, both are freed from this spe-
oies of compulsion in a beaten circuit no
matter how incommodious or unthrifty it
might prove. A like alteration has been
wrought in the position of the country mer-
chant We speak only with reference to gen.
eral results, believing that exceptions are not
numerous enough to impair the validity of
our deductions.
A natural consequence OF the new state of
things emerging from the dissolution of the
old system of trade is the tendency of plaut-
erg end country merchants to put themselves
in direct connection with sources of supply
in the West. We are aware that in the
opinion Of some Of our contemporaries such
a tendency is vicious, abhorrent, boding all
manner Of mischief and ought to be sternly
Teprobated and repressed. According to their
theory planters should buy nothing from
abroad which it is within the EXTREMIST limits
OF possibility for them to make at home; and, |
above all, they should not buy one dollars
worth Of bread and meat, or of any kind OF |
Western produce. To judge from their |
chronic flow OF admonitory remark, they |
believe that planters cannot possibly get |
along unless their brains ars washed clean of |
their own notions about their own affairs by |
periodical torrents Of journalistic advice. |
But we can see no reason why men engaged |
in agricultural enterprise should be peculiarly |
disqualified Tor pursuing their own notions |
regarding matters in which their own inter-
ests are especially concerned. We are will |
H.. - T.
er they viii make the staples of home con-
sumption Gt home, or whether. for the sake of |
producing more cotton, they will produce |
less corn, pork and beef and depend on their
neighbors, or if need be on the Western
farmers, for the resulting deficiency in the
way Of food products. OF course, they may
sometimes fall into mistakes and suffer disas-
tiers but in the long run, their spontaneous
tendencies will be found to have pointed to
healthful lines of development, and their cal
cUlatiOns viii turn out to have been based on
an unerring intuition of the wants the avaiIa-
biliues and the possibilities of the situation.
But how, it may be asked, is the establish
ment Of a direct connection of trade between
planters and the Western sources of supply
1
Let us briefly consider. 1t is safe to assume
that IL planters obtain produce directly from
the West, they are influenced to do so solely
by the consideration Of greater cheapness. 1t
is also safe to assume that the more produce
they thus receive the more cotton they will
make. AS the item Of greater cheapness is
equivalent to proportioDate increase Of sup
niles IL foIlOvva that fhara yril be a I,~-o~ |
production Of cotton than could be reasonably
expected under different condition ofthings.
And surely that is not result to be depreca-
ted in behalf of the commercial interests OF
this city. New Orleans, as the great cotton
emporium of the Southwest has no valid
cause to be Jealous of the produce markets in
The West. The idea Of competing with the
sources of supply in the business of supply
ing Intermediary regions with produce, could
oplv epfar info fba dvaop,c Of a-,zo5 80, |