Year: 1872

Comfortable citizens, engaged in the ordinary routine of any business which does not have widely ramifying connec- tions, cannot appreciate the real disaster which has been wrought by the suspen- sion of railroad communication between the Atlantic and Pacific. They read, with little shiver, of trains of passen- ger carriages snow-bound in the defiles of the Rocky Mountains {; but the sun shines, travel is unimpeded, and trade fiourishes on Broadway and Pennsylvania ave. To bankers, commission merchants, snow blockade has brought confusion and disaster. Trade between the East and the Far West is practically suspend of exchange, letters of credit, commercial advices, orders for goods, instructions to sellers and offers to buyers, are all, with vast huddle of wares and mer- chandise, locked up in the snow drifts of the heart of the continent Personal discomfort is undoubtedly very great !; indeed, to prevent starvation of the be- leagured passengers, the Government has dispatched provision trains, just as it paternally sent similar relief to the unhoused people of Chicago; but the privations of these wayfarers are small, compared with the troubles of those whose business is crippled by the snow blockade that has lasted for weeks and may last for weeks to come. The Pacific States, which have just begun to feel that they are now part of the social group which we call The Union, are rele- gated to their old seclusion, made more unbearable by their change from the former order of things to the new. We can appreciate something of the depriva- ton of business facilities to the chief port of the Pacific when we think of it as utterly cut off from railroad communi- cation with the great money center of the nation, with weeks of mails, great sums of money, and piles of merchandise buried in the snow half way across the ointment.

 The snow blockade is unfortunate be- cause of its probable influence on foreign trade. The last monthly steamer for China and Japan sailed without the mails and goods which were on the way from Europe and New York to San Francisco. French mails for the French Pacific colonies, and English mails for Australia and New Zealand, will be de- tained and an important embassy from Japan, composed of men unused to an American climate, but having great faith, hitherto in American railways, is snow- bound in Utah. So the influence of the snow blockade will extend far into the Pacific Islands, Hawii, China and Japan All these considerations make the case more grave, and intensity desire to break the enforced embargo. We cannot say if any previous neglect on the part of the Union Pacific Railroad managers has hastened or aggravated this disaster. Impatient passengers and perplexed business men will be swift to blame the corporation on whose line travel has been suspended. But, after all, no single interest is so much concerned in terminating this state of things as that of the Railroad Company itself. Perhaps the privations of the passengers might be mitigated by more liberal care on the part of tue railway people but these last suffer the greatest misfortune.

 It is fortunate for the business men of both sides of the continent that the old steamship facilities, via Panama, have not been withdrawn and it is a sign of hope for the future that we mean to have more than one transcontineutal railroad before many years have passed. Expe- rience has proved that we cannot depend on single iron track, reaching from sea to sea, great though the achievement of that work was. We must have North ern and 0 Southern Pacific Railroad. The present disaster will show how the Union Pacific may hereafter be better defended but we cannot afford to risk again an utter blockade of our highway to the Indies.-N. Y. Pdper.