| From the Richmond Dispatch |
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| September 23, 1861 |
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| High prices, from Defective Railroad
transportation |
| The slowness, uncertainly, and
deficiency of railroad transportation in
the South, especially in Virginia, is producing a taxation upon the
people vexations, onerous, and in the last degree unfortunate in its
consequences. At any other time than during a period of war, the
people might afford to pay seven dollars a sack for salt and twenty
and thirty cents a pound for sugars; but if they are forced
unnecessarily to pay these prices during the pendency of war, a large
tax is extorted from them by private speculators, which diminishes
that far their capacity for contributing help to the country in its
struggle. |
| We have on former occasions
shown that there is really no deficiency of salt in the Confederate
States. We have pointed out the specific means from which an increase
of supply can be procured more than sufficient to compensate for any
falling off from the stoppage of importations. But, notwithstanding
that the supply is abundant, yet, owing to the failure of the
railroads to transport it from the points of manufacture to the points
of consumption, it is bringing in some localities the enormous price
we have named. There is especially in Virginia not only enough salt to
supply her own wants, but enough also to furnish all they need to at
least half the Southern Confederacy. It is blocked, however, for the
want of transportation on the railroads.
We understand that many of the depots on the Virginia and Tennessee
railroad have considerable stocks of salt held by speculators, and
that these are confident of making large profits on the property, from
the belief that the road itself will not bring down salt from the
Salines, in Smyth county, in quantities to meet the demands of the
market. |
| Much allowance is to be made
to the railroads for the heavy transportation they
are obliged to do for the Government; but this should not be permitted
to produce a total suspension of transportation
for the people. If the railroads refuse to make arrangements
for transporting ample supplies of such an article of necessity as
salt for general consumption, they fail to perform their duty to the
public, and become a curse to the community, by aiding and abetting in
fact, however unintentionally, the extortions of speculators. If all
the salt that is manufactured at the Salines on the Virginia and
Tennessee railroad, were brought down by that corporation, there would
be no difficulty in obtaining it at $2.25 a sack, the price demanded
at the Salines, with the freight to Richmond added. |
| What is said of this article
is true of almost all others for which exorbitant prices are now
demanded. There is no reason why brown sugars should be sold at the
enormous prices now demanded for them. They can be got for six and a
half to ten cents in New Orleans, which price, with the regular rates
of freight added, would bring the cost in Richmond to a figure that
none could complain of. But the failure of the railroads to transport
the article produces a deficiency of supply here, which places the
people at the mercy of unconscionable speculators. When it is
recollected that the community have consented to a very heavy taxation
for the purpose of constructing these railroads, their delinquency at
the present time seems unpardonable. |
| Such is the intensity of this
evil resulting from inefficiency of railroad transportation,
that goods are now wagoned in many parts of Virginia for two or three
hundred miles along the lines of the railroads, from the utter
inability of the people to procure transportation
for even necessaries of life upon their freight trains. The
evil calls aloud for reformation. There can be no expense for the
continuance systematically of an evil so galling and so crushing to
the community. |
| While it is impossible to
procure freights on the railroad or regular routes of freightage,
Express companies seem to have no difficulty in getting their own
costly transportation through; so that
the only sure mode of procuring supplies by railroad, is by paying
Express rates. This is a disreputable mode of evading the charter
restrictions upon the railroads prohibiting higher rates than eight
cents per ton per mile. |
| Not only might sugar, salt,
and nearly all articles of Southern production, be procured at
reasonable rates, if the railroads would only transport the freight of
the people, but many articles not of Southern growth could be
materially brought down in price. We understand the depots in
Tennessee and Kentucky are filled with dry and miscellaneous goods
brought in from the North before the communications with the enemy
were cut off; and that there would be no scarcity of the larger
variety of goods needed by the public, if only the railroads would
bring on the freight waiting for transportation.
The people might be saved, probably, half the expenses of the war, in
the lower prices they would have to pay for supplies and goods, if
only the railroads could be brought to do their duty. We trust that
the attention and scrutiny of the public will be fixed upon the
subject until some reform is wrought of one of the most oppressive
evils of the day. |
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