New Orleans Republican., 1877-05-05
OUR COMMERCE.

for discussion, and 80 New Orleans, which
suffers from a stagnant condition Of COM
merce, has provoked much comment
among amateurs in this sort of science.
One correspondent of the New York Times
makes a very sad diagnosis of our condi-
ton and prospects, which another con-
tradicts with some heat. The immediate
dispute seems TO be whether New Orleans
holds her own in cotton receipts. Cor
respondent number one asserts that neaF-
ly all the cotton and sugar produced in
Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi were
formerly received at New Orleans, but
are now sent to Eastern markets. Cor
respondent number two properly contra
diets this assertion, but leaves a rather
cloudy impression that the proportion of
cotton receipts at New Orleans is as great
as before 1860.
The city of New Orleans received be-
fore 1850 nearly fifty per cent of the whole
cotton crop. 1t now receives something
more than one-third. Before 1860 there
was steady increase in the receipts. Since
the war the same rate of receipts has not
been maintained. 1t f1uctuates with prices
and seasons; the receipts this year be-
ing, to this date, 202, 657 bales short of
the year preceding, or about fourteen per
cent. This variation has been caused
by two facts. The first, that much of the
cotton raised on the eastern tributaries of
the Mississippi has been turned by rail to
Atlantic ports. The most signal example
of this change of trade is found in the
fact that Norfolk, connected by rail with
Memphis, stsndspow the second cotton
receiving port in the Union, when, before
the railroad era, she received no cotton at
ALL Savannah and Charleston receive a
good deal of cotton formerly due at Mobile,
and seven or eight per cent of the whole
cotton crop now goes directly East by up
river or overland rail. The effect of steam
delivery has changed alike the channels
and the vehicles of commerce. New Or
leans acknowledges this fact by shipping
some sixty per cent of her cotton exports
by steam, while sail offers lower freights.
This tendency of all export trade to move
itself on right lines is everywhere demon
strated, and rivers or canals, unless as
parallel ways to the sea, are scarcely rival
to railways. The New York canals al
most threaten to become o charge upon
the State treasury from this cause. Even
the ocean coastwise trade between New Or
leans and New York has suffered greatly
from the through rail between these
points, The REPUBLICAN published in
September last that the values of
merchandise received in New Orleans by
rail from Eastern and Western points
amounted to more than forty millions Of
dollars, all of which had been diverted
from the river and ocean lines. New Or
leans has approximated her cotton receipts
before 1850 positively but not relatively,
and this is due to cause other than COM
mercial. 1t is the transfer of that labor
which once produced for the eastern ports
of Savannah, Charleston and Mobile to
the territory around and west of New
Orleans. The exhausted lands of Caro-
lima and Georgia have ceased to furnish
the same inducements of food and wages
with the fertile soil of Louisiana, Texas
and Arkansas. The purchase of labor
before 1860 has been suspended by the
immigration of free labor. The fifteen
or twenty thousand majority of Repub-
icau voters in Louisiana are composed
greatly of this class, and while the white
carpet-bagger has been denounced for the
destruction of the State, these COL
ored carpet-baggers have increased
the sugar, cotton and rice receipts
of our city. The cause of this reduction
in relative receipts is the substitution of
rail for river transportation, and the rea-
son why New Orleans has not lost still
more Of these receipts is that emancipa-
ton has brought free kbor, without the
cost of purchase, from the cotton fields
tributary to Southeastern cotton ports to
the slluyial lands of the Mississippi and
its Western tributaries. Nothing is
to enable New Orleans to reap
the whole advantage of this transfer of
labor except to tap Texas by rail, when
cotton, finding it too expensive to trn-
verse line Of twenty-five hundred miles
to deep water port at the East, would
come inevitably to New Orleans for cheap
freights and sufficiently rapid transit to
the worlds mills and markets. Such, in
our opinion, is the true transition state of
the New Orleans cotton market. The
same explanation will apply to the total
transfer of the Western export provision
trade from the Mississippi outlet to those
of the Eastern railroads.