| From the New Orleans Times Picayune |
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| January 17, 1862 |
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| Push on the Railroads |
| A Suggestion to Planters |
| The Montgomery Mail thinks the
present a most favorable period for pushing on the various railroad
enterprises of the South, at least to the extent of excavation,
embankments and road-bed construction, and in connection with this
subject makes the following suggestion to planters: |
| There is no necessity for, no
utility in, planting cotton this year. Three-fourths of the slaves are
a sufficient force to raise ample provisions and clothing for home use
and for market. The remaining fourth could, in twelve months, build
beds for railroads wherever there is authority for building them. |
| The stock of these roads
would, as an investment, pay more, and no doubt quite as speedily, as
an overwhelming stock of cotton with which to glut the markets of the
world. Then why, we respectfully ask, should not every planter
residing or owning lands contiguous to a projected railroad put a
portion of his plantation force to work upon it, receiving stock of
the company for his remuneration? The other portion of his force could
produce, as already intimated, food and clothing for that so engaged,
and a sufficiency also for other nonproducers of those commodities --
thus enabling the planter to pay his necessary expenses during the
war's continuance. |
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