Memphis daily appeal. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1847-1886, 1870-05-14

THE number of cotton bales pro-
duced by the several counties in
Mississippi and Alabama, prenetrated
by the Memphis and Selma road can
not be accurately stated. We only
know that from six interior towns,
which have become shareholdersinth
corporation, more than n hundred
and fifty thousand bales are annually
sent north and south. Very certainly
Memphis must remain the cheapest
market in the South. 1t can hardly
have dangerous competition, while a
magnificent river furnishes a cheaper
meaEs of transportation for heavy
freights than railway lines. In other
words no farmer or tradesmen Of the
interior along the line Of Forests
road, will buy bacon or grain or flour,
in Louisville or Cincinnati, when he
can secure it on the same terms in
Memphis. Cotton produced along For
rests road may be attracted to New
York, through Selma and Savannah,
but there are as cheap lines of river
and railway transportation through
Memphis, and the excellence Of our
grocery market, improved constantly
as the resources of the northwest are
developed, will attract cotton planters
with greater force than any minor
question affecting freight charges on a
few cotton bales. The Iron Mountain
road, competing with the river, will
reduce freights between this city and
st. Louis to a minimum, and the COM
pletion of the Memphis and Kansas
City road, which is an airline extern
sion Of Forests road to the Union
Pacific, will not only give the Gulf
States direct access to the western
ocean, but make Memphis the cheap
est grocery market in the Southern
Valley of the Mississippi.
But it is useless to discuss the wis
dom of making this appropriation of
half a million dollars to the Selma
road. Mercantile intelligence per-
vades, and, we hope, controls, this ]
entire community. Farmers
augment the value OF"
create NIGH ii
duct
Of agricultural industry and such
ends can only be attained by the con-
struction Of railways, and by such
agencies alone can Memphis and
shelby county be aggrandized. Me
chanics, above all men, are most
deeplv interested in the construction
of railways. They reap the first and
direct profits in employment given 70
labor. skilled and unskilled. In truth,
there is not an intelligent gentleman
in the city or county who urges an OBJ
lection to the subscriptions proposed
save that based upon present public
poverty. .
There has never been a road bull
terminating at Memphis which dc
not add largely to the value OF city
property, or keep it up when it other
wise would have gone down to moth
ing. This Selma line will beget thu
same result, and as surely draw t
Memphis from the North and North
west other railway lines, even as thu
famous apple which Newton watche-
in its fall was drawn toward the cen
ter Of gravitatiOn. Within the mont
that Forests road is finished, if there
be truth in the past, this city anC
county will be worth at least seventy
instead Of fifty, millions. Can't W,
risk more than half a million? TIT
question is rather whether Forres
asks for enough, than whether he ask
for too much. We can pay a debt {
four and a half millions with the an
of the Selma road easier than we ca
four millions without it.