Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1870-03-24
FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL.

| FRIGHTENING PRosPECTs.-The hostility Il
Fremont as President of the Southern Pacific
railroad company eyinced in Congress eman-
ates from the Union or Northern Pacific com
pany, which would not have a Southern riva
! line constructed which is invested with pecu
| liar advantages of climate and isotherma
| lines. denied by natures irrepealable laws t.
the more northern route. LOOK at a map
draw line from Omaha on the Union Pacific
to Kansas City, thence to Memphis and Savani
nah, or Brunswick. and build railway oyei
this line. and the South has its almost direc
route to the Western ocean.
Memphis, by this road, would draw hithel
the whole grain and bacon crop of the new
Northwest; not only that portion of it which
now seeks the ocean through st. Louis and
New York, but the whole South would be sup
piled with Northern products through Mem
phis. No city III the Valley of the Mississippi
could then compete with us in the abundance
and variety of agricultural products sold in
this market. New York is too distant; New
Orleans is the natural outlet for Western Mis-
souri,, Kansas, and all those new Western
States, and Memphis is their natural gateway
to the sea.
Col. Meyers, of this city, in conjunction
with Eastern capitalists, has devised scheme
by which the Memphis and Kansas City road
will soon be endued with fresh vigor. The
whole scheme will be developed at an early
day. We have said enough in this article to
give clue to shrewdness. There's money in
it.
he lrat 10 nUad and the
tendency of stocks and bonds downward.
Serips and all local securities are depressed.
Slight efforts are still spasmodically made to
bolster up local securities through sales in New
York, real or supposed. Attorneys, employed
not long ago by an association of citizens to
prevent the payment of bonds issued in substi-
tuition for scrip. by which trade taxpayers
were swamped for seven hundred and fifty
thousand dollars dead loss, say that the thing
can be done. If the bonds have passed into
the hands of innocent holders, we think the
effort wrong and success impossible. 1t was,
nevertheless, an awful transaction, not the
less reprehensible though honestly made.
SHAMEFUL dodge of Boutwell,, by which
he debases coin in order TO make paper re-
spectacle, is CHASTITY trick, to which an hon
est gentleman would hardly resort. We would
have left in the country one pure. honest, I'M
deRled commodity, Politicians are debased,
voters corrupted, lying, perjpred witnesses
swear falsehoods, without a grimace, before
Beast Buffers foul committee, State is de-
graded and ruined that knaves may plumber
it, and now the current coin, all that was left
us of purity from that age before the deluge of
woes that war wrought-the current coin is to
have impurities injected into it. There is
nothing that is not debased; even woman
God pity us-has not wholly escaped. Graft
fed are we that the South is still preferable to
any other land as the home of civilization and
of hope. to the extent that the "current wo-
man /" of the South has not been debased, put
into trousers. jury rooms and rum holes.
Corrox.-The cotton market yesterday was
as dull as Grant at a state dinner, and it is no
better this morning. Sales were light, 76
bales, yesterday, There are no transactions
except to fill orders. Middlings go at 2l1s to
De; low middlings, 30 to 2011c; low ordinary
and ordinary, Is to ls1sei mixed. lie.