Staunton Spectator

The Richmond Dispatch illustrating the short sighted policy of the "Richmond Merchants" is virtuously indignant at the "startling propositions" of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad to build a branch from Winchester, along the Valley, to Salem. The Dispatch says 'its effect would be divert from Richmond much of the trade and traffic which our people have for years been led to expect from Southwest Va., and the Valley. This simply means that Baltimore would thus afford a market so much better than Richmond, that the people of Southwest Va., and the Valley would trade with Baltimore because it would be their private interest and resist this opportunity for the Valley producers to seek better prices than Richmond merchants will give.

The Legislature is invoked to "consider" the matter. We trust it will do so for the sake of the interest of the great producing portion of the people which it equally represents with that of the "Commission Merchants" -- a class useful enough, perhaps, but still which lives upon the profits arising from this very want of facilities which requires a "middle-man" between producer and consumer.

We admit the propriety of giving the preferences to our own State business men, but calm that the "reciprocity" should not require our State producers to make a sacrifice for the sake of increasing profits at the expense of these very producers -- equally our own State citizens.--Just thirty years ago, Baltimore proposed to build a railroad throughout the Valley, from Harper's Ferry to the Tennessee line, and with a branch from Staunton to the Ohio River, and not only not tax the people to build it, but actually offered to pay a bonus forever into the State Treasury for the privilege. But the Richmond merchants, naturally enough, defeated it by appeals to "build up your own cities" -- and by promises that the Valley should have a better market is not yet offered to counteract the greater expense of getting to Baltimore. Meantime our producing community has been heavily taxed to build roads, and all the while borne the tax upon their produce consisting in the different of cost and time required to reach the beset market amounting in thirty years to millions of dollars. This fact, alone has discouraged thousands of our people, and sent them off to seek in mere favored lands the just reward labor.

If our country had reached its maximum of production there night be some excuse for controlling the disposition of its products to build up particular cities. But when the capacity of production has been scarcely tested, sound policy would seek to encourage the producer to his utmost, and expect thus eventually, and more surely, to build up cities in which the surplus production seeks its market.

In that very western country to which many of our farmers have in this last thirty years been driven, the freest competition in choice of markets has been granted, and, in consequence, all along these competing railroads the "villages" of this thus developed region now exceed Richmond in wealth and population.

The cost, and thus tax, upon the producer of getting his produce to market by a railroad is increased by each additional mile of railroad -- the charge being by the mile. Now a railroad from Staunton, for instance, to Baltimore, would be something over 200 miles long, while to Richmond, by a short track direct from Charlottesville, would be little over 100 miles, a difference of 100 per cent. If Richmond fears competition with Baltimore under the great difference, for the Augusta trade, it indicates heavy charge upon this trade to force it to go to Richmond, notwithstanding. And to carry out the policy of requiring Virginia to trade with Richmond, merely because it is in Virginia, regardless of cost to the producer, would be to compel the citizens all over the State, no matter how near to Baltimore, and better prices for their products, to bring them to Richmond that her merchants should make fortunes.

It is time such suicidal policy were abandoned. Let the Legislature now "consider" how it can best develop the unlimited resources of the State's producing wealth, on which all other wealth at last depends, and then it will follow, as the night does the day, that "our own cities" will find their true prosperity, and be "built up" permanently. Let her commission merchants and her local papers go to work, like Baltimore, and build avenues that will induce trade there; let them make, for instance, the "short track," so long talked of, from the Valley to Richmond, thus bringing almost the whole Valley nearer to Richmond than to Baltimore, and let them cease whining because, without these facilities, people are left simply to sell where they can sell highest and buy where they can buy cheapest. Hercules helps those who put their own shoulders in the wheel.