| From the Savannah Republican |
| |
| March 17, 1863 |
| |
| Transportation Needed |
| A correspondent of the Rome
Courier says: |
| "There are over one hundred
thousand bushels of corn sacked and stored away in Albany alone, in
close and often damp rooms, which must soon be ruined, unless sunned and
dried, or shipped and used. Planters through the country are holding
corn in the same dangerous condition -- all for the want of
transportation. There must be bad management somewhere. I applied not
long since to an agent on S. W. R. R. {South
Western RR}, to know how long it would probably be, before I
could get off corn I had purchased for a fiend, (a planter, not a
speculator,) in your section. The agent replied to me that he did not
know, that they, (the railroad,) had had several trains of corn standing
on the track in Atlanta, which they could not get unloaded, and so long
as the road was thus impeded in its work, it was impossible to say when,
or how much, corn could be shipped. |
| The people here were urged to
plant corn last year, they did so -- they are now urged again to plant
corn, plant corn, all of which is well. Yet whilst they see their
produce ruining on their premises, or wasting with such speed, in their
warehouses, for want of shipment, knowing at the same time that their
friends in distant parts of the State are suffering for the want of it,
it could not be expected that they would be much encouraged to bend
their energies to the production of provisions, seeing them thus
disposed of, and I am fearful they will prefer a less perishable
production, though it be, in the present condition of our country, less
patriotic to do so. Only give them transportation, take away their
produce, and though it rot in heaps, yet if it rot not under their own
eyes, my word for it, this part of Southwestern Georgia will do her part
to support our people at home, and our armies in the field. |
| "But if the bread they have so
patriotically prepared must become a stench in their own nostrils, blame
them not if they, for the future, prevent a repetition of the same. I am
no planter, yet I know their feelings -- allow me to say too I am no
speculator, nor even a trader, and have only that interest in this
matter common to every man in our common country." |
|