| From the Richmond Daily Dispatch |
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| August 20, 1861 |
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| Salt -- recapture of Kanawha |
| The supply of salt is becoming
a seriously mooted question. The value of the article imported into
the United States during the year ending June 30, 1860, was
$1,431,141. The official tables do not give the quantity; but,
estimating the sack at two-and-a-half bushels, and at a
dollar-and-a-half in price, the quantity was about 2,335,235 bushels.
If we suppose one-third of this quantity to have been imported for
Southern consumption, the supply required for the Southern market over
and above what is manufactured within the Southern States, would be
778,412 bushels. Whence this extraordinary supply is to be obtained,
is a question of some interest. |
| The works near Abingdon, in
Washington county, in this State, have heretofore manufactured about
three hundred thousand bushels a year. Owing to the high freights on
the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad, this supply has nearly all gone
off in wagons through the country, and upon boats down the Holston
river. Several hundred thousand additional bushels would have been
manufactured for the Eastern market, but for the railroad freights,
which brought the price in Petersburg and Richmond up to a figure too
high for competition with the foreign article. |
| The blockade may remove this
difficulty and preparations have been completed for increasing the
annual supply produced at those works by about three hundred thousand
bushels, which will all come East, unless the cheaper transportation
on the Holsten river than on the Virginia & Tennessee Railroad,
and the strength of the demand in the West, shall direct it all in the
opposite direction. At all events, from this source alone will 300,000
bushels of the 778,000 deficiency be supplied to the Southern markets. |
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