New Orleans Republican. [volume] (New Orleans, La) 1867-1878, 1875-12-18

lecture on the subject, have determined
all trade and travel by rail and wire, which
provide regular and rapid means of
| communication direct. Now, when the
| politicians said the decline of our city
due to the iniquities of the Republicans
| and Democrats in the Legislature,
who voted for the Democratic mon
| opolies Of butchers meat, lotteries and
levees, they either deliberately misled
| the people, or they wanted that knowledge
| of the great agencies which have changed
| the commercial channels and vehicles of
the world, which every well informed
| journalist should possess. If these jour-
! nails had read the REPUBLICAN they would
| have seen the diversion Of the water
borne trade and travel published in the
| reports of those railroads which convey
the valley t,ade across the rivers and
| mountains, and as this trade could not
| come both routes New Orleans has lost
| that which she once held in impiegnable
| monopoly. The REPUBLICAN has shown,
from the report of the Senate Transporta-
ton Committee, that but one million of
tons out of twenty-five passing between
| the West and East, comes by way of New
Orleans. Of passengers and values
the proportion is far less in our
favor. We would suppose ordinarily
| that, if town seated upon tina
only roadway of communication should
| find that roadway substituted by rail-
| road, it would not be difficult to explain
| to those villagers that the travelling and
transporting people preferred to use the
rail instead of the stage coach and wagon .
| The substitution of the same agencies has
had a similar effect upon labor as upon
villages It is the railroad and the tele.
| graph. That's what's the matter with
New Orleans. The politicians of New
Orleans have seized on the consequences
OF cause operating everywhere to make
case against the Republican party, in
charge of the State government. With
an ingenuity which could not have i'm
posed upon any but people highly ex-
cited or overawed, the politicians have
explained how it was that the city, whose
| debt is larger, whose taxes are heavier,
and whose expenditure is greater than
| that Of the State but which is and has
been under Democratic administration,
| owes its decline to the faults of the Re-
| publican State administration.
In "nationalizing" the politics of Louis
| lana, the Democratic politicians have
painted the misfortunes of the city in as
gloomy colors as possible. The trade
rivals of New Orleans elsewhere have
| copied these disastrous and disgraceful
cartoons and cast over them deeper and
| darker shades.
At last, however, it is seen that Louis
! lana, with her little five or six votes, can
| amount to nothing In the electoral college,
| so her unstaunched wounds are bleeding,
| and the treasury door 10 slammed upon
her outstretched hand to the manifest
| damage Of her fingers.
The politicians new begin to admit the
| decline Of New Orleans to be due to some
thing besides political misgovernment.
| The Bulletin says:
There is good deal of well founded COM
plaint, especially among our retail traders,
| OF u etagnation in business unparalleled
| even in the series of disastrous years since
| the war,
Besides the clothing and coal interests,
| it is said
Other retail business suffers on account
OF the absence of visitors and strangers.
Uusually at this season arrivals mum Der
hundreds day-sOmetimes even thou
| sands-and the hotel registers and crowded
streets bear witness to rapid increase of
| our transient population. This year. on the
| contrary. the dulness of August is almost
| reproduced in December. The hotels are
more full of echoes than of guests, and
there are fewer strangers in our city than
we have noticed for many years past at this
season.
The Bulletin does not consider this
''only transient phase of the commercial
situation. The country customers are
not prevented from purchasing goods by
the want of money. The crops are good,
and the prices remunerative. The Bulletin
says that one-third of the cotton is yet un-
picked AS it has been said that Demo-
cratic voters kept on voting for jackson
long after his death, perhaps the cotton
pickers have not heard that the election
war is over, and SO, still prefer their camp
in the swamp. The hopes of the Bulletin
are not supported by its reasoning, for
while "the persistent warm weather,
which threatens to reduce the winter to q
period of five or six weeks, has prevented
sales, the planters will "come prepared
to buy more largely than for several years
past"
AS we have explained why the general
| current of trade has been turned from
this route to others, to the injury of our
city, We shall make plain, in few lines,
| why the retail business is not as brisk,
| nor the visitors as numerous as formerly
The exchange of goods for cotton for
merly effected through the factor and re-
tail merchant here has been transferred to
the country merchants" of whom the
Bulletin speaks. These country mer-
chants now make the advances which our
merchants formerly made, and the cotton
| ia p1rchasa and maid for diractIv hy tbo