The Chesapeake Bay Trade, Part 2

What about the Eastern Shore trade question?

What is Baltimore going to do about securing to herself that vast amount of business which is hers by every right of State ties and geographical location?

Now this question involves not only the whole of the Eastern Shore peninsula of Maryland, Delaware and two counties of Virginia, but every one of those tidewater counties of the Western Shore and Virginia for which Baltimore is or should be the main, the natural, the logical and most agreeable market place.

If this territory held only the remains of a few dead or decadent communities there would be little cause for such questions. But the people there are wide awake, thrifty, prosperous and full to the brim with business energy. They control land and water products in such perfection as does not obtain in many other parts of the world. Every hour adds to the commerce of the region, but every hour shows some new attachment for cities not in the State of Maryland. They produce and buy in enormous quantities, but for some reason Baltimore has lost some ground as the main distributing and purchasing point, though on the whole her trade with these sections has become greater.

Merchants all along the line, both in this city and in the tidewater country, are crying: "It is time to wake up." But how?

What is the trouble?" they are asked, "and how can it be remedied?"

"It is the Pennsylvania Railroad," they reply. "It has established its lines, the Delaware division and its New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk railroad, from Wilmington to Cape Charles [City], and it has run spurs into a number of good towns on the peninsula. That is all right. The people wanted and needed railroads and got them; but the Pennsylvania has worked ever and always for Philadelphia and to the detriment of Baltimore.

TROUBLESOME CHESAPEAKE.

"When it had gained an immense business it was still insatiate. Not content with getting for Philadelphia more than that city's share, it had to crush out all such opposition as must still work for Baltimore while that opposition lived. The troublesome Chesapeake bay, with its Baltimore steamboats and cheap carriage, was in the way.

"What did it do then? It bought up practically every bay steamboat in Maryland waters and made it still easier for the merchant and farmer and fisherman and packer to visit Philadelphia and New York and to buy and sell goods in those cities. It has raised rates on the bay, discontinued some former shipping points, increased the price of meals on its boats, given worse service than when the independent steamboat lines were running, and, worst of all, has made schedules that are about as bad as can be devised. All this has hurt Baltimore immeasurably. It has cut off trade from Baltimore in some sections and in others, even where this city's trade has grown by natural increase, the city has not received the full measure of that increase. The constant tendency of this policy has been on the Eastern Shore to force the people to the railroad which runs to the North, and on the Western Shore to get products into Baltimore at such untimely hours as to operate powerfully against this city as a distributing point."

"But can all these things be proved?" the merchant is asked. "It is easy to make assertions and great monopolies are in high disfavor with the people; therefore almost anybody is liable to take a fling at them."

"Proved! Proved? Why, there is plenty of proof on every hand. Go to my neighbors here on Light, Camden, South and Gay streets and on Cheapside and Exchange Place. Go to the dissatisfied people all along the Rappahannock river. Go to the people of thriving Onancock and to the Accomac residents of Saxis and Messongo, on Pocomoke sound and Ford's wharf, in Somerset. The Messongo wharf, you know, was abandoned. The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway conceived the brilliant idea of going to Saxis, across a neck of land from Messongo, and delivering goods from Baltimore on a platform built on piles out in the water of Pocomoke sound. These goods have to be taken from this wooden island in small boats to the mainland. You don't suppose the people in the back country of this territory put up with that sort of thing, do you? No, sir. The live too close to the New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk railroad. They simply transferred their business to that road and dealt with Philadelphia instead of Baltimore. There is plenty of proof, but say -- look here! You must not use my name or my firm's name in THE SUN in connection with this matter."

FEAR FOR THE BUSINESS.

"Why not? If abuses exist and you want a betterment of condition you ought to back up your assertions with your name."

"No, sir! We have got to keep peace with the Pennsylvania Railroad. That company is the only line of transportation by boat or water between us and our customers. It has us in its grasp and it could make things very warm and uncomfortable for us on every shipment. In fact, it has the power to drive us out of business."

"But you have your tariff book. You ought to know what every freight ought to cost."

"Say, did you ever see a tariff book of the B. C. and A.? No? Well, neither have I; and our house sends an average of a freight car load a day down the Chesapeake. Some days the equivalent of five carloads is sent down."

"Then how do you know what you are going to pay for freights? But probably you do not care since the receiver of the goods pays the freight when he gets them?"

"Oh, does he? Not much. Do you know that the Pennsylvania makes the Baltimore merchants prepay the freights to 75 per cent. of the points reached on both shores of the Chesapeake bay? Well, that is a fact. Now, with a house sending away the equivalent of a carload a day you can readily see how much of the capital of Baltimore merchants is tied up in this proposition. No, sir. The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic has no rate book, but its rates are outrageous, all the same. How do we find out how much we have to pay? Why, we have to telephone to the company to find out. That's how. But say, don't use my name."

This injunction, "Don't use my name" was found everywhere THE SUN made its inquiry. There is a general fear among the merchants of being "found out" by the Pennsylvania, and this is ordinarily the sign of an effective monopoly; for men who would be brave and prompt to resent a personal insult or injury talked with bated breath on a question which placed them in the position of an opponent to their only means of carrying on their business.

SOMETHING IS TO HAPPEN.

Now something seems about to happen. Either that part of the Pennsylvania Railroad which is in Maryland will do its fair share toward the welfare of Baltimore, or an independent line of steamers will be started on the Chesapeake bay, or the manufacturers and the merchants who have blamed the Pennsylvania Railroad for a large part of Baltimore's misfortunes will have to subside quietly, take their medicine and admit that if business which Baltimore wants goes to Philadelphia and the other cities of the East it is because those cities possess insurmountable advantages over the Monumental City.

A full, fair and free discussion will, at any rate, appear in these columns and the business men of Baltimore can have a chance to call attention to the discriminations which, it is claimed, operate against them and in favor of other cities. It must be stated that the unrest and dissatisfaction of the business men who do business with the Eastern Shore and the other tidewater counties is positive and undeniable and somebody must be proved in the wrong before the matter can finally rest.

One of the worst features, if it be a bad feature, of the Pennsylvania's control of the Chesapeake bay traffic is the schedule system now in force.

Baltimore is recognized by all shipping men as one of the most favored spots on the Atlantic seaboard as a distributing point for goods of the field, farm or water. A prominent transportation man said to THE SUN yesterday:

"Do you know that Baltimore is so situated as to be in all respects the equal, and in many, the superior of all other cities in the distribution of such goods? There is, in fact, no better place for supplying Western Pennsylvania and New York. If -- now I say if -- it is desired to send such goods by some other route how it can be accomplished? Simply by putting the goods in Baltimore so late that they cannot be sent out to the points which Baltimore can or should easily reach. The fact is that the boats have schedules that bring them in too late for any market at all. They come in from the lower bay at 10, 11 and 12 o'clock in the day and the merchants suddenly find themselves loaded up with goods and have no way of disposing of them.

"No boat should come to Baltimore with perishable goods after 5 or 6 o'clock in the morning. I can easily explain why they do come so late as I have stated, but I stick to my text for the 6 o'clock boat. I also assert that schedules can be arranged that would bring the boats in at that time.

MUST STRIKE BEST MARKET.

If the goods do not come in for the best market, how long do you suppose the shippers down the bay will submit to such a schedule when they can send their goods by fast trains to Philadelphia and get them there while buying is going on? Not a minute after learning the true way of getting the most out of their products. This miserable system has led many shippers to look upon Philadelphia and New York as superior markets to Baltimore, and it is a common belief now, though it should not be, that both of those cities are a better place to send goods than Baltimore. You will take Baltimore the year round, and you will find that as much is paid for goods in this city as in any other mart. It is also a fact that Baltimore people used to get goods a little cheaper than the consumers to the east of us because the freights here, following natural lines, were cheaper than to those eastern points. Unfortunately, natural lines seem to have been wiped out and only artificial ones are left.

To follow up this line of argument, the merchants themselves were sought. A firm on Camden street, near Charles, was questioned. The senior member, after making sure that his name would not go into the paper said:

"It looks as if the Pennsy was trying to break us up. Our firm handles a large amount of goods from the Rappahannock river, including, in season, oysters. In the summer we receive perishable truck, poultry, eggs and the like. We receive these things time after time when the market is practically over. Goods arrive to us at 10, 12 and 1 o'clock, and we do not know what to do with them. In winter we are, in a large way, handlers of oysters. Our business in this line is being hurt fearfully by late arrivals. It is not only the Baltimore market that we reach, but we are distributers, and much of the goods that go through our hands go away from this city by railroad. We have received oysters and other goods so late -- goods that ought by right to reach us at 6 in the morning -- that we have found it impossible to ship our orders on trains leaving Baltimore at 5 o'clock in the afternoon. The whole service is as bad as it could possibly be, and if it is not changed for the better good-by to Baltimore business in lines that are peculiarly hers. I only wish we had once more the independent lines that helped us in our business instead of hindering it. I know for a fact that if one should start, the shippers in our territory along the Rappahannock would take up a respectable amount of the stock."

GREAT DISTRIBUTING POINT.

To put a proof to these points advanced by the transportation man and the commission merchant an old ex-steamboat man was asked for his opinion.

"They are absolutely right," he said. "There is no better distributing point in the States than Baltimore. But to do business the boats should arrive here no later than 6 o'clock in the morning. The general rule in steamboating is to give the country people the day for getting their goods to the wharf, to run by night and merchants can handle them. I happen to know that the boats to Baltimore come entirely too late and goods are sacrificed. Take strawberries, for instance. What can be done with them after noon? There is a great demand for them all along the distribution lines from Baltimore, but the boats come in at such a time as to make a farce of any efforts to get the right and proper prices for them. Naturally they go by rail lines when the boats fail. Now, you know what rail lines mean in this State. The whole situation is either gross mismanagement or is a policy designed to divert most of the traffic to the railroads and to help Philadelphia."

A succeeding article will tell wherein they feel aggrieved by discriminations, bad schedules and other drawbacks which they allege exists to the detriment of Baltimore and in favor of Eastern cities.