Belmont chronicle. [volume] (St. Clairsville, Ohio) 1855-1973, 1875-02-11
Railroads and Production.

II
No one can read the croaking articles
that appear SO frequently in print re-
specting the causes of the panic, revul-
sion and stagnation without a feeling
of bewiherment as to what is the nor
NAL state Of things for a prosperous ma.
ton. For a year past thousands of in.
dustrious people have been outofem-
ployment, industrial works idle or run
ming on short time, poverty increas'
ing, and capital accumulatiug in huge
boards, vainly seeking profitable in.
vestment. This is spoken Of as a heal.
thy and wholesome reaction, while the
prosperity that gave employment tc
all this labor and capital is denounced
as imitation. A railroad is built thro
a region that has no such facilities
Along its route are quarries of valua'
BILE stone, mines of coal, iron, or othel
metals, brick-clay, slate, forests of lum
ber- The railroad opens these to CAPT
tai and labor, and they find their way
to market and create populous loca
centers where the farmers can sell theil
produce. According to one class O
writers this is initiation, but on what
ground it would puzzle anyone tc
show. 1t takes up that which has lair
unused and give it a market and sub
stantial value. That, We take it, in
stead of being initiation is development
One pretentious commercial organ
that affects a world of wisdom on fl
nance and trade, speaks of the railroad
mania as having diverted a vasl
amount of laber from the production Ol
commodities. But what are these peo-
pie to produce? More wheat, more
iron, more coal, more corn, more cop
per, more potatoes, more books, more
lead, more butter, more engines, more
provisions? Are we not told in the
same breath that all these are in excess:
Almost every conceivable form of pro-
ductiOn to which American capital and
labor could be turned has been tried,
and not feebly but boldly and vigor-
ously. There is no sense in telling q
shoemaker to make locomotive or a
printer to raise sugar or peanuts. A
miner cannot build houses nor brick
layer make copper kettles. In the great
national development labor finds its
way into whatever lines are available,
attractive and lucrative, and to say
that the labor that builds our railroads
and keeps them in repair and works
them should be applied to something
else, ignores the fact that every other
avenue of toll is fully supplied and
many overStOcked. ,-1
But the building of a railroad is as
much form of production as the rails
ing of vegetables. Men and women
require the one quite as much as the
other. According to some theorists, the
agriculturists are the real producers.
But in his turn the farmer cannot pro-
duce the very implements he works
with, the clothes he wears, the bed he
sleeps on, or the house he inhabits.
Production, then, really includes eve
rything salable, or that has a real or
substantial value, and to exclude rail-
road building from the catalogue is
simply ludicrOus. The railroad itself
is a producer, since it creates towns
and villages, gives biIth to farms, saw
mills, quarries, mines, machine shops,
&c. The railroad mania has in this
way left its marks all over the land,
and if, instead of taking capital away
from these lines, we should stimulate
the putting of more and more capital
to them, so as to enable the companies
all to resume and to continue vigorous
ly their policy of internal development,
all the mischief wrought by the panic
and revulsion would be speedily un-
done. For the same sagacious coun-
sellors who denounce the railroad. ma
mia as the cause of SO much misery, re-
gard the vast extension of mining and
as sort of national delu-
sion, the work ofinfiation.
1t is time now that these people came
down from their stills and walked on
hard earth. Let them stop generali-
zing about the need of devoting labor
and capital to increased production
and tell us what we are 10 produce that
is not already in excess. In what di-
rection American capital and labor
have been turned or have been advi-
sed to go they have achieved the most
results. Let the era of ac-
tivity return and we shall de still great
er Things. But labor must follow its
lines. 1t mus be used in the
pursuits to which it has been trained,
and to divert 1t from them is to render
it less valuable and less productive.