New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1871-09-04

Dor and afford no income, the residue would
have greater market value than the whole
does ct presents and they would be abe 70
buy the stock, Implements, machinery, Ter
tilizers, &C., for lack of which their efforts
are now relatively inefficient and fruitless.
The first need Of every Southern State to-
day Is the application to it's soil of the system
of surveys which Is one of the most benefcent
devices for which mankind are indebted to
our Union. If Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia,
and West Virginia, were surveyed into right
angled sections and parts thereof, as are the
Public Lands of the United States, their real
estate would be worth at least twenty-five per
cent. more than it now IL, and thousand
acres of it could be sold where hundred can
now be.
Such q survey would affect no mans title,
affect no existing boundary. No doubt, own
ers would gradually buy and sell, exchange
and release, 80 as to bring their lines into
conformity with the official surveys; but they
| would do this only 80 fast and so far as their
| own interest should dictate. But estates OF
FIVE to forty thousand acres, which are now
scarcely salable at any price, would be readily
| bought in sections, quarters and eighths, at
| rates now unattalnable.
Having been surveyed, all the lands that the
owners did not wish to retain should be
brought into market. That is impossible under
the present no-system. Owners are anxious to
sell; they would gladly accept very low prices !;
but there are no buyers. He who has thou
| sand or even five thousand acres to sell can
not afford to advertise as his land should be
advertised: the cost would be ruinOus; and
probably his advertising would sell ten other
estates and not sell his after all. An inquirer
who started southwark expressly to look at
his place would encounter 80 many would-be
sellers on his way that he might never reach
| that place at ALL
Now, there should be very extensive adver-
| Using of Southern lands, not merely at the
North, but in Great Britain and Germany; yet
| it cannot be done in an isolated way. But let
| all those who have lands to sell in Virginia
put them into the hands of one agent or COM
pany, and let that agent advertise them 80 as
to reach every freside in the North and half
| those of Great Britain and Germany-let him
advertise 80 many acres in this 80 many In that
county, with capacities and prices-let him
make arrangements with steamboats, and
railroads for the cheap transportation of
those intending to purchase, and advertise
where and how excursion tickets may
be obtained, and there would be no
difficulty in selling Ten Millions of
acres per annum. The agent or company
should pay all expenses, take all risks, and be
allowed liberal commission, such as would
| warrant and incite the most extensive advertis-
| ing, and, unless exOrbitant prices were asked,
| there could be no failure We are confident
| that One Hundred Thousand tenant farmers
| or sons of farmers could be drawn from the
British isles alone to Virginia within the next
| two years. if adequate efforts were made to
enlighten them, with regard not merely
| to the cheapness and value of the
| lands, timber, &C., but to the means and cost
of reaching those lands, the enhancement of
their value by railways already built or in
process of construction, and the ease where
with their owner could be recalled to Europe
| by telegraph and set down at his fathers or
| brothers door within two weeks from the dis
patch of the telegram. The masses in Europe
know Just as much of this country as we do
of Australia, and are generally in doubt
whether Virginia is in Boston or
little north of Chicago. Show them
that it is within days ride of NewYOrk,
with ample and excellent harbors, bays, rivers,
&C., supplemented by canals and by rail-
roads, and they will much prefer it to the
remoter regions and harsher climate of the
North The facts that Indians no longer
stray within hundreds of miles of its borders
and that it has Episcopal churches, roads two
hundred years old. an established social order,
&C., will prejudice mulitudes in its favor
The South needs more people, greater di-
versity of pursuits, more skill, more energy and
thrift-more mills, more shops, more factories,
more furnaces-she does not need more capital
than will inevitably flow in upon her if she can
but utilize what she already has, We submit
these suggestions to her leading minds, in the
hope that they may SOW some seeds of future
thrift and progress.