The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-06-24
TUESDAY EVENING, JUNE "a. 1873
MeckIenburg County.

The Petersburg Appeal pays glowing
compliment to the Northern and English set
tiers in this county, and speaks of its rap
idly increasing prosperity as follows:
Mecklenburg seems to be gaining the first 20.
sition among Northern and English settlements
in the South. Whether we look at the character
of the colonists, the extent of their wealth. or
the evidences of their ENTERPRISE, we are struck
with astonishment at the great work which has
been and is being accomplished. There can be
no matter of doubt that Mecklenburg is bound
to be rapidly settled up with colonists of a supe
ror order, who as they come to the state, will
need to make large purchases of goods in every
department of trade. If they are attracted to
Petersburg in the first instance, they will be apt
to continue to buy and sell here We ought,
therefore, to strain every effort TO secure and
sustain so important a business connection.
We are personally acquainted with some
of these Southside settlers, and know that
they deserve all the commentator bestow-
ed upon them. They are energetic, 60
ahead, public-spirited men, who have taken
up tracts of land in Mecklenburg, not for
speculative purposes, but for permanent
settlement, occupation, and improvement,
and are in every respect the class of men
Virginia most wants to-day and will most
want tomorrow. The project of railroad
through this county, extending from Pc
tersbnrg to the Roanoke Valley and be-
You'd, is one that must strongly recommend
itself to capitalists, as well as to the pub
lie generally, and should meet with oppo-
stion from no section. The idea seems
to press upon some of our legis-
lative Solons, like an over.ridden
nightmare, that the prosperity of one
section of the state must necessarily bring
ruin and calamity to some other, and that
it is impossible to build up one centre of
trade without measurably pulling down
another. All this is the sheerest possible
absurdity. II our Mecklenburg friends
were to pursue so wise policy as to get
hundred thousand Northerners and
Engllshmen into their county, with pros
perity and abundance showered upon
them all and their chief trade should centre
at Petersburg, it could not be the millionth
part of any conceivable fraction of detrl-
ment to Richmond or any other
trade.centre in the state. On the
contrary, their enterprise would large
ly stimulate other localities. and their ex-
ample become so widely contagious, in the
way Of thrift and general activity, that,
the first thing we should know, twenty
other counties would be rife with the same
spirit of industrial activity and enterprise !;
and so the "contagion would run, until
the whole state should present but one
spectacle, and that the glowing one antici-
pated for Meclslenburg county.
We care not .how many railroads may be
built which don't have their immediate
terminus in Richmond. 1t would be diff
cult to build railroad in any part of the
state, without its becoming directly or indi-
rectly, feeder to our city; and the nearer
our great material resources are reached and
the more they are developed, the greater will
be the benefit to all sections of the state,
especially TO its chief centre of activity and
trade. Let our Petersburg and Mecklen-
burg county friends, therefore, go ahead,
and bind their interests together ever SO
closely by tie and rail; they cannot achieve
prosperity without imparting it to others,
any more than the chest of the giant can
heave without imparting vitality to the
blood that flows to the remotest parts of
his system