The weekly democratic statesman. [volume] (Austin, Tex.) 1871-1883, 1876-10-26
EXAcTIONS IsiPOsED by THE GEN.
TRIAL AND INTER NATIONAL RAIL.
ROADS-- TILE ONLY HEMEnY.


ROADS, THE ONLY HEHEDY.
An exchange says that the Central and
International railways lately had competing
rates for the shipment of cotton, but, as
might have been expected, have comPro-
missed their differences and adopted uni
form rate of So IS per bale from Austin TO
Galveston. This is about seventy cents
per hundred pounds, and yet we have seen
cotton shipped through the winter at one
dollar per hundred pounds from New Or
leans to New York, and the average rate
from Memphis to Boston is one to one dol
lar and twenty five cents. But in what con- |
sists the remedy What measure of relief |
is achieved by hard swearingl If the roads |
be long and penetrate sparsely populated |
districts, having few farms and many I'M
occupied praifies and boundless forests, are
not the railroads themselves as helpless as
the VictimiZed people? The people, we
imagine, are not the only sufferers. If the
roads were not valuable to the country,
even at these rates, farmers would return
TO old practices and revoke famished
broadhorns and consume a month or two
on each journey to Houston and the sea.
While farmers and merchants fail to do
this they confess the advantages conferred
by railways and are sIlenced when they
would condemn. But the evil subsists
and is intolerable, and there is a remedy.
1t will be found perfect. 1t will not only
relieve the people but the railroads. 1t
will make populations dense and multiply
farms, render land valuable because it rem
ders its products valuable. 1t will augment,
of course, the number OF passengers and
make railway travel and transportation as
cheap here as in New England. The sOlu-
ton OF the difficulty and only remedy for
the evil consists simply in the construction
OF the cheap road begun by Mr.. House from
Austin to Houston. Merchants and farmers
need not growl or weep. The Central and
International roads, or their owners, must
live and do not propose to starve. If the
country's population, products and mer-
chandise will not pay for the maintenance
of the roadway and for machinery and mus
Gle used, save when intolerable eXactions
are imposed upon town and country, these
last need not howl like whipped sDaniels or
curse their luck or the railways A manly,
publlc-spirited, intelligent people discovers
at once that these broad gauge roads can only
be made profitable of themselves by making
populations dense and farms numerous
ha ar
tanned only by building the cheap railway
begun by Mr.. House at Houston, and pro-
posed to bc brought hither by those who,
even now, would build sn extension of
Houses road to Lampasas and Bolton. II the
broad gauge roads have cost $50, 900 per
mile and the narrow gauge cost one-third
this sum, the narrow gauge need charge
only one-third the rates of freight de-
manded by the more costly highways, and
instead of $375 per bale to Galveston,
Austin, if true to herself and to her own
interests, need pay only $l.25. Such will
be. the maximum charge imposed by the
sum to be saved. Passenger rates and
charges fastened upon everything trans
ferred from the sea to the base of Mount
Bonnsll will be lessened IN the same ratio,
and if this sudden augmentation of rates
defined by the Central and International
roads compel the old fossils and the few
selfish Or unthinking tradesmen of Austin
to cooperate at last like sane people, and
build twenty -five miles of the narrow gauge
90
sert that heaping Goals of fire upon
terrapln's back made this stolid
city move, aud that, however sell
fish the purposes of the Central and
the greatest aud most generous benefactors
the sluggish capital of Texas ever knew.
It may be proper to suggest to those
whose skulls are u foot thick that we find
in this alliance between the two rival roads
from Austin to Galveston an illustration of
the coming conduct of Gould and Scott if
-the United States government be as stupid
as that of Texas and aggrandize Tom Scott.
st. Louis and Philadelphia newspapers
have denounced US because we said that
Scott and Gould, as soon as Scott secured
the money he wants and built his road,
would become partners. They will no more
fight one another, when innocent people
make and they lose by it, than the Central
and International corporations of Texas.
But this question has no practical relevancy
to that which we now discuss. The neces-
sity for the attraction to this city of Houses
Narrow Gauge and of the Indianola and
Cuerp road, IN view Of facts presented, be-
comes so Rlaring that even our city fathers
may confess it. They are not so blind that
they cannot see the absolute necessity for the
adoption of measures which may assure the
two commercial results here contemplated;
the one involves cooperation with Com
modore Morgan; the other, with those
chiefest benefactors of the capital who
would give 1t access to the rich country
north aud northwest of us, and thus compel
the coming hither of Morgan and of House.