Franklin Repository

THE WAY IT WORKED--At the recent session of the Methodist Conference in Washington, Bishop Simpson and a colored preacher, the Rev. Mr. Lawson, to Staunton, Va., to preach to the blacks there. He preached one half day in the Methodist church vestry to a black audience. The next day the white clergymen of Staunton met and voted that thereafter no colored man should preach in that place, but that once in four weeks one of their number should preach exclusively to the blacks. The black members of the Methodist Church, three hundred in number, and paying nearly all the parish expenses, thereupon seceded, leaving the church to its eighteen white members, and organized a flourishing church of their own in the spacious rooms of a carriage manufactory. The Baptist clergyman, seeing the ruin of the Methodist Church, and conscious of the inability of its own white flock to sustain him, immediately sent an offer of his vestry to a colored Baptist clergyman. The offer was accepted, and ever since that day the two most flourishing churches in Staunton are the Black Methodist and the White-and-black Baptist.

Some years ago a party of English capitalists commenced the extension of the six feet gauge railroads from New York [illeg] by the establishment of the Atlantic and Great Western Railroad. They aimed at a continuous six feet gauge from New York to St. Louis, and that has been accomplished or soon will be. The first grand movement of the English operators being about completed, Sir Morton Peto, the great Railroad King of Europe, with a party of capitalists, visited this country, and personally inspected all the important railroad lines in the Northern States. They were received with the utmost hospitality, and had every opportunity to estimate correctly the resources of the country. While here they conceived or matured the grand idea of constructing a continuous line through Pennsylvania, professedly for the purpose of developing certain portions of the State not favored with railroads; and instead of proposing their scheme to the legislative power of the State, they have attempted to secure the necessary franchises for a through route by leaving the Catawissa and purchasing several charters held by speculators. They have secured possession of the Morris and Essex road of New Jersey, which with the Lehigh Valley, Quakaki and Catawissa gives them a through line from New York to Milton.They have also purchased the Centre and Spruce Creek and the Western Central charters by which they hope to reach Franklin, and also to intersect their own road below Greenville, in Mercer county. Thus do a party of English capitalists, an organization foreign and unfriendly to all our interests, attempt to acquire possession of a through route in our State, that would paralyze both Pittsburg and Philadelphia, and use our territory merely to sweep our own wealth and that of the West, to foreign markets. Such an enterprise might receive the sanction of a Pennsylvania legislature, but it would be under restrictions and conditions which were not deemed important in granting local charters such as the Catawissa and Centre and Spruce Creek roads.

At first blush most men are prepared to welcome capital from any part of the world to construct railroads in Pennsylvania; but when the aim and well matured purpose of this enterprise are considered, it would be a suicidal act to allow the proposed route to be constructed without a careful revision of its franchises by the proper legislative power. To understand the character of this enterprise, and its fatal consequences upon our industry and commerce, we must look to the settled policy of English capitalists as acted upon with fatal consistency since they have commenced the gigantic work of controlling the trade of the North and West. England has been ready for years to make almost any sacrifice to control our trade. In this it has had a two-fold purpose. Its first aim was to cripple our industry and paralyze our commerce and improvements, and its secondary aim was to possess the trade, which should enrich our own commercial emporiums. Acting upon this policy, the English government authorized the construction of the Great Trunk line in Canada some years ago; and to enable it to compete successfully with all the great lines in the United States, its bonds, stock, real estate, rolling stock and all its property were exempted from taxation. Thus were millions of dollars made free from the oppressive taxes of the English government solely for the purpose of striking a fatal blow at the commerce, the industry and transporting lines of this country. By this enterprise the English carrier now gives a bill of lading in Detroit or Chicago through to Liverpool, and a few years ago the English line could carry a barrel of flour through Canada to Portland and from thence to New York or Philadelphia at a less cost or certainly not a greater cost, than it could be transported over the direct lines through the States. This enterprise necessitated New York and Pennsylvania to remove their taxes on tonnage, or surrender the whole teeming wealth of the west to the grasp of England.

The proposition to secure franchises by stealth through Pennsylvania, and construct a through line from the West to New York, is but a part of the grand scheme that originated the Great Trunk line, and would be the consummation of the same. It would benefit a few localities, because it would hasten their development before their local interests would warrant it; but it would be the work of death to Pennsylvania commerce, and would in time be fearfully destructive to the great industrial interests of the North. Philadelphia and Pittsburg are the great manufacturing centres of this country, and this enterprise would strike at the vitals of both. It would not only isolate them, but it must cripple them far beyond any present calculation. Philadelphia has invested some fourteen millions of dollars in the Pennsylvania and Philadelphia and Erie Railroads. These investments were made not with the view of direct profits on the stock, but mainly for the purpose of bringing to our great commercial and manufacturing centres a fair share of the wealth of the West. Pittsburg as a great manufacturing city, gathers wealth from East and West, and after compensating her vast industry and capital, diffuses it again to home markets on every hand; but here comes the giant foe of both our commercial and industrial prosperity and proposes to sweep the wealth of both and take it, without tribute or any compensation, to foreign markets, thus using our own domain to compass our destruction.

But there is another and graver objection to this enterprise that has not as yet entered into the discussion on the subject so far as we have observed it. It is of course carefully concealed by the friends of the measure, and perhaps many of its opponents with most neutrals do not at all appreciate the magnitude of the peril this movement will eventually inaugurate to our industry. While commerce and local development appear on the surface to be the great aim of the English movement through the heart of the North, it is evident, upon a careful examination of the enterprise from its inception until now, that its chief aim, in English estimation, is to create a power in our own midst that can be made almost totally destructive of our industry in any depression of our industrial pursuits. Let it not be forgotten that from the day the great Trunk line was originated until the completion of the Atlantic and Great Western, the English investments in Railroads have not been made to pay dividends on stock. They have been made by the English capitalists, who are the English manufacturers, for the purpose of controlling ultimately the industry of both England and our continent; and they need but the completion of the through route in Pennsylvania to place the manufacturing interests of our State and of the North almost entirely at their mercy. Just now this danger is not apparent. Our industry is prosperous and well acquitted; but the time will come, in the mutations of trade, when English coal will blacken our wharfs as of old, and English fabrics and manufactured articles of all kinds will be able to compete successfully with our own. Then would the death blow be struck by this gigantic English artery of trade. Then would the fabrics of the English looms and the handy work of English manufacturers crowd our shores, and they could be scattered through the very heart of our own enterprise, at nominal cost of transportation, and thus would the English cheap labor bring its work in competition with us at our very doors from the Sea board to the Mississippi. In such a contest, we could have no remedy to rescue us from the remorseless grasp of English enterprise without degrading our labor to the English standard. It would be the great artery of death, and we cannot but regard its success as the crushing blow, to be felt in but a few years, to all our present high hopes of industrial progress. Let us be wise in time, if it is the interest of England to develop our own State, then it is ten fold more our own interest to do it; and the fact that the Atlantic and Great Western proposes to develop where the [illeg] themselves do not pretend to say [illeg] capital can be compensating, doing so is the very best evidence that the enterprise must have ulterior purposes and interests which cannot be in harmony with our own prosperity. We ask the calm, honest, earnest attention of the legislature to this question and entreat for it an intelligent judgement that will not loose sight of the thousand sinews of industry on which our greatness and wealth depend. Let it not be jeoparded, and above all let it not be placed at the mercy of English capital, whose only hope of success is in our own destruction.