Year: 1879

era PacTfc RnIiHoy.

 We want and will have no coniro- 7ersy with this portion of the press so far as their railway comments apply to their own side of the Colorado, but when they come this side and assert that the railway is bringing ruin to Arizona, protest needs to be entered Their general tone is very kind to Arizona, but they neutralize much of .he good they would otherwise do by declaring that Arizona is being blight ed by the railway If Southern Cali fornia is not so prosperous as before it had railways, it only argues that there is some other cause or causes at work than the railway. They have the free ocean for travel and traffic, which they always had. As to Ari- zona we now give few facts in point:

 Before the railway reached Yuma the people of Arizona generally were eight to ten days from San Francisco, and to make the trip involved five days and nights of terrific staging and three days of sea travel and seasick- ness, and an outlay of about $l25. Now the time is less than three days fourteen hours by stage and balance by rail, and the cost about $50. For nerly the fare to Yuma was $6O, and three days and nights of hard staging; now it costs S32.50 and twenty-seven hours of time. Formerly freight from Yuma was much higher and from twenty-two to fifty days on the way now it comes in from five to ten days. Formerly merchants bought goods in San Francisco expecting to get them on the next outgoing Colorado river steamer, and were often obliged to let them lie there forty to fifty and even sixty days for the following trip, there being no other means of transporta- ton; now goods come forward the day of purchase if desired. Formerly many men of capital and desire to look at and invest in our mines, came as far as Yuma and could not be in duced tocome further; now they come, and are investing and developing the country with benefit 10 all concerned.

 It is true that some businesses have been dispensed with, but others have been created. Instead of wagon shops and corrals in Yuma, there are now repair shops and car and locomotive shops and houses and men to work in them. Instead of teamsters there are now railway laborers. Instead of re- lying almost solely upon the receipt and forwarding of goods for the in terior, Yuma is now turning its atten- tion successfully to the permanent and independent business of mining. h. stead of stations for freighters and car riers of mails and passengers along the Gila Valley, an almost equal number of stations are built for and occupied by railway laborers close to and paral- Tel with the river, with all its rich val ley and its river of water for the farmer and stock-raiser, and thus the number of laborers are increased by the railway. If a freight house isI being taken from Yuma to Casa Grande, it is one the railway put at Yuma. and the company still retains larger and more buildings than were previously there. Yuma's taxable prop erty has been largely increased by the railway, and hundreds of active and able miners have, because of the rail- way, gone into the mountains south ward of the Gila Valley in Yuma and Maricopa Counties and have found valuable mines, and their prospects are very bright. If old Maricopa Wells is not the important place it once was, the town-almost city-ofI Maricopa has been built near by and on heretofore useless land, and also Casa Grande, little farther east.

 Every progressive section of coun- try either has railroads or is trying toI get them, because in this day they are indispensable tO general comfort andl prosperity. They will prove no ex- ception in Arizona, so our neighbors beyond the Colorado will please fight the railway on their ground and not on ours.