Valley Virginian

The Fincastle Herald says:--Our former legislation on the subject of railroads was unwise. It sought to build up a few interior cities, not by the sure means of developing the more fertile and populous agricultural districts of the State, but by establishing numerous little lines of railway from one pet city to another, and at the same time refusing to open up the better portions of the State, for fear trade might possibly find its way to Baltimore instead of to Lynchburg and Richmond.

What has been the result?

Baltimore, anxious to secure for herself, not only the trade of the great Valley, but a link in the Southern Pacific thoroughfare, has through the Baltimore and Ohio R.R. Company, taken advantage of the short sighted policy of Eastern Virginia, and now holds out to our people the only tangible hope they have ever had of a railroad.

Had some of the cast sums of money, squandered so lavishly by the State, in former years, upon Eastern railroads, commencing at nowhere and terminating at the next station, been appropriated to the construction of a line running from Salem to Staunton;--the trade of the Valley would to day be pouring into Richmond and Norfolk, and the Alexandria and Orange R.R. on one side, and the Virginia and Tennessee R.R. on the other, be ultimately the link in the Pacific thoroughfare.

As it is, the B. & O. R.R. Company will build the Valley road and make it one of the connecting links in the Southern Pacific.

We would rather our own State to build the road. But this is now out of the question,--and a railroad we must have, build it who may. The enterprise of the Valley has languished long enough for want of an outlet to the world. Her coal and iron cannot be allowed to slumber longer up yonder in the mountains. Her people are not satisfied to dream while others are awake and doing.--They yearn to hear the whistle of the engine.

But why does the work lag? The expectations of our people have been somewhat disappointed by the tardiness of the B. & O. R.R. Company.

We are glad to see the matter being again agitated by the Valley press.

You are allowing your children to grow up in idleness. You permit them to break engagements at will. You let them be as insolent as they please to yourselves and rather like it when they are disrespectful to their employers.--how is this going to end? If you, with habits of industry, find it uphill work to make a living, what is to become of your children? White children, raised in idleness, always turn out badly. Will your children turn out any better? When you are no longer able to support them--and that day is coming much sooner than you suppose--they must--we repeat it, they must become thieves and vagabonds. These are serious questions and every day you put it off answering them, makes matters worse. Worse and worse.--An evil day is coming, perhaps to all of us. If you love your children and want them to do well in this world, make them civil and make them stick to their work. A few years hence, it will be too late, too late. Mark Native Virginian