Conservative *
ing advice in the Nebraska City News
of November 10th , 18(58 ( :
We , as an old settler , may perhaps be
excused for giving advise to newcomers ,
and so venture a little of that cheap
article.
It is better and cheaper for newcomers
comers to winter in the river counties
than to go into those of the interior. It
is better because houses are more easily
secured , grain more plenty , and fuel
more reasonable. It is cheaper because
corn and hay are cheaper on the river ,
and so is wood , and so are groceries.
And when spring comes , buy small
farms of entered lauds in river counties ,
and improve them as your means will
permit. Forty acres within ten miles of
a market town on the Missouri river ,
will pay better than ICO acres fifty miles
west of it. A homestead is often times
the dearest bought land in the state ,
though given to the settler. It costs "a
heap" to take up and improve raw
prairie , miles from timber , miles from
market , and miles from schools and
churches.
This is our argument. It is much
better for the settlers , and much better
for the state , to give one-half of the
unoccupied raw prairie laud in the in
terior , miles from timber , miles from
market , and miles from schools and
churches , to a railroad company that
will build a railroad into this uninhabited
prairie waste , and sell the other half for
$2.50 per acre to settlers. Give the
settler his choice , laud for nothing ,
miles from timber and miles from a
railroad , or land at $2.50 per acre near a
railroad , and the lands at $2.50 will be
taken and made into farms long before
the free lands will have population
enough for a county organization. The
schools have one-eighteenth of all the
lauds in the state , amounting to nearly
8,000,000 acres. If the state of Nebras
ka makes a judicious appropriation of
the lauds for internal improvements , by
restricting the time to five years for
building the roads , and giving a portion
of the lands only on the completion and
acceptance of the same in sections of
twenty miles , she can secure the build
ing of four or five lines of railway in the
state , adding to the taxable property in
the state $50,000,000 and increasing the
value of the school lands in the state
$5,000,000. Nebraska will build herself
up with railroads ; this rich soil without
timber must have railroads to supply
the deficiency to the settler and carry to
market the products of this garden of
the West. Let the lands be so dis
tributed that a large part of the state
' may receive the benefits. With a fair
proportion of these lands , the Midlanc
Pacific Eailway can be completed to
Lincoln , the capital of the state , in the
year 1809 , thus giving to Otoo and Lau
caster counties the immediate benefits
of her share of those lands.
It is not the object of this circular to
convince the people of Nebraska that
he extension of railroads into the state
s of more importance than any other
mprovement , or all other improvements
of like character ; the fact is self-evident
hat a largo majority of the people in
his state know and fully appreciate the
vast benefits to be derived from them.
Many of the inhabitants of Nebraska
mvo emigrated from the old states east
of us , and in their early life have wit
nessed the building of one or two rail
roads , and felt the great revolution in
irade and commerce. They have sold
; heir old farms , received the great
advance on their real estate , and now
lave the evidence that railroads make
a country while without them it re
mains dormant and slow in develop
ment. But there is a small class of men
who call themselves conservatives , self-
styled conservatives ( they adopt that
iame because they fancy there is a show
of wisdom in the name ) who apply to
nternal improvements views as fatal tea
a community or a city as it would be tea
a merchant for him to refuse to solicit
; rado or offer inducements to customers.
They do not perceive that while they
are trying to preserve the people from
nnovations and extravagant expendi
tures , they are at the same time bottling
them up and isolating them from the
channels of trade and commerce. When
; hese misdirected conservative efforts
succeed in any one community or
.ocality , the outside world moves on
without it. It must forever afterwards
pay tribute to those around it or triple
bhe expenditure to recover their position.
Railroads cannot be forced through any
city , town or country when large in
ducements are offered to go around it.
Why not apply these conservative views
to building houses and improving farms ?
Why mortgage your farms to add more
acres , open more land , sow more seed ,
or build new buildings ? "The highest
state of improvement for the face of the
earth , " is the motto. Every aim and
every blow struck by mankind says
improvement. The farmer improves
his farm , his cattle and horses ; the rail
way improvement brings him every
thing , distributes materials , unequally
apportioned by nature over the face of
the whole earth ; railways make new
states , populate waste places by bring
ing the surplus population from crowded
cities , and carry products of the soil to
market at one-half the former cost ,
thereby doubling the value of the soil.
The amount of capital now invested in
railroads in the United States is 1,600-
000,000 dollars. The demagogue tries to
produce a prejudice among the people
against capital. The demagogue tells
them that capital invested in a railroad
is a monopoly. Does he say that you
must prevent capital from accumulating
prevent people from growing rich
Then if you cannot prevent capital from
accumulating how will you have i
nvested ? The demagogue says all rail
roads are monopolies. Is a railroad a
monopoly when it carries you a thous
and miles in forty-eight hours , for the
sum of forty dollars , when previous to
he building of the railroad yon were
carried in stage coaches , the same dis-
ance in ten days , and charged $100 ? Do
not most men welcome all suchmonopo-
ies ? In addition to this great reduction
n time and money , they by the same
nvestmont , and the creation of the
same monopoly increase the value of
your property from one thousand to
; wo thousand dollars. If people could
dictate how money should be invested ,
would they say put it in government
) ends , that the owners might draw their
nterest at no trouble to themselves and
no advantage to them or would they
offer inducements to invest it in a rail
road running by their doors to increase
the value of their property , and furnish
one of those misnamed monopolies ?
What is there to induce a capitalist to
convert his interest-paying bonds into
doubtful paying railroad stock , unless
; he people who are to receive the benefits
offer him some inducements ? The
statistics of the state of Illinois show
nearly 4,000 miles of railway. They also
show that a railroad built one hundred
miles , at an average cost of $4,200,000 ,
and that the increase in the value of the
real estate along the line of and within
the influence of the road is $10,920,000.
While the capitalist has converted and
invested his money in a railroad with
the care and anxiety of watching dis
honest employees to make it pay him
seven or eight per cent , the people have
made $10,920,000.
The English government found in the
railroad system the only policy to sus
tain herself during our late war , without
American cotton. At the breaking out
of our rebellion , she commenced build
ing railroads in British India. A paper
read before the statistical society of
London by R. Dudley Baxter , in Novem
ber , 1866 , shows that since 1861 the
English government has granted $440-
000,000 subsidy to cotton railroads in
India. She has built a main line
through the center of the empire , uniting
the extremes , with many branches
through the cotton districts , and by that
means supplied her cotton factories at
home , and kept her people from star
vation and revolution during our re
bellion. In November , 1866 , there were
three thousand two hundred miles of
railroad in operation and one thousand
miles in process of construction , to be
completed in 1867 ; and now in 1868 ,
they have completed an unbroken con
nection from Calcutta to Bombay , a dis
tance of fourteen hundred and fifty-
eight miles all belonging to one com
pany the Great India Peninsular
Railway Company. By the develop
ment of British India with railways ,
more than half of the supply of cotton
