The Chesapeake Bay Trade, Part 4

Onancock, Va., July 29. -- The last letter to THE SUN previous to this showed the very bad state of affairs that exists on the Eastern Shore of Virginia by reason of the inability of the Pennsylvania Railroad monopoly to move the crops of this region after it had effected its monopoly.

It was shown that the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway steamers had failed utterly to move their share of the crop of 600,000 barrels of white potatoes produced in Accomac and Northampton counties this summer, and it was shown that the people are in a high state of alarm as to what will happen a few days hence, when its sweet potato crop of more than 1,000,000 barrels starts.

The people of Accomac and Northampton counties are prosperous and happy. They have all the pleasures that accompany a rural life by the broad waters of the Chesapeake bay and most of the conveniences that are attainable to dwellers of great cities. Their acres are board, their social intercourse delightful and their intelligence is of the sort that makes living beautiful for the very sake of living. They scratch the ground and crops spring into being that feed a great portion of the world. The world wants those crops and gladly buys them; but there is a sudden halt. The means of transportation are lame, halt and blind, and when the Accomac and Northampton farmer finds that the weak link in his chain is the mere carrying of his goods from those who produce them to those who eagerly buy them he stops long enough to look into the matter.

IT IS A GARDEN SPOT.

He finds himself on a peninsula with a great New York, Philadelphia and Norfolk railroad upon it. He sees many ports at which he may ship his food products by way of his metropolis and the metropolis of his fathers -- Baltimore. He tries to ship to Baltimore and finds that the steamboat service is such a child's play, such an inadequate and helpless nonentity, that he can no more depend upon it than he can wait for the airship service which may be produced in future days. The question of the hour is this: Shall Baltimore continue to merit the regard and the business friendship of these Eastern Shoremen, or shall she ignore them; shall she keep in touch with a live and prosperous people, or shall she turn them over to Philadelphia, which with the help of the locally owned railroad, has gone into a neighboring State, absorbed all sorts of concessions and privileges from it and sapped the best that exists in business life?

Do not make any mistake about the prosperity of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. Its soil fairly reeks with the goods for which the world is glad to exchange its money. Pay attention to this:

Mr. William T. Westcott, of Savage Neck, near Cherrystone, put 14 acres in cabbage this season. For his product he received in cold cash, $6,974.52.

Mr. Everett J. Beloate, of Onancock, put only four acres in onions, from which he received $2,242. That is $560 an acre.

It is people who are making money like this that Baltimore is now called upon to save as friends and customers and consignors to the Monumental City. Before the Eastern Shore of Virginia Produce Exchange was called into being soil, climate and location counted for nothing. Accomac and Northampton farmers raised the best truck in the world and better potatoes than did the New Jersey farmers, whose best was the criterion by which all others were graded.

Then this wonderful exchange was organized, and W. A. Burton, also a native product, was put in chare. Mr. Burton had had 10 years' experience in the commission business in New York. Not only did he bring to bear all the knowledge he had gained in the New York market, but he had the clear, unclouded intellect of the country-bred boy and a local patriotism undefiled by city associations. He gathered about him a force of sharp, shrewd yet honest fellows -- grubbed them from the very soil of Accomac -- and he formed one of the strongest teams that ever took the destinies of a territory in hand. Burton's crowd went to work when farmers were sending potatoes to market and getting only 80 cents a barrel when they were in luck and 50 cents when the fates were against them.

A LIVELY BUNCH.

Burton's crowd got $2.10 a barrel of the best potatoes on a day when the staff correspondent of THE SUN visited him at Onley last week, and when the New York market was paying just $1.40 for the product. There are no flies on Mr. Burton and his office staff, including C. R. Waters, also a product of Accomac soil.

Said Mr. Burton to THE SUN:

"Do not make the mistake of supposing that Baltimore can ever become the distributing point for Eastern Shore of Virginia goods. That period is gone forever. This little country town of Onley, Va., is now the distributing point and it will be such so far as man can see into the future. Don't you know, sir, that we get as good rates from this point as Baltimore or Philadelphia or New York can possibly get? In other words, we send goods on through cheaply as if they originated in any of the big cities I have mentioned. No city is now big enough to became a distributing point for our goods. The distributing point is here. We have through rates, and they must not be disturbed. We are satisfied with them and that is enough.

"But, Mr. Burton, your people here are all indignant because the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic steamboats fall to take your crops to Baltimore, and they all say they want to deal with Baltimore,, but are hindered by the bad transportation arrangements. How do you explain that?

"Very easily. While the great mass of our goods is shipped from here directly to our customers all over the United States, our merchants here would gladly deal with Baltimore in all other things, in addition to which Baltimore ought to get its share of our farm products just the same as any big city of the Atlantic seaboard. In Baltimore at this minute are 7,000 barrels of our potatoes, shipped by us, on through rates to the West. Of these 95 per cent. are destined for distant points and 5 per cent. only will remain in Baltimore. What becomes of that 5 per cent.? It is handled and sold by Baltimore merchants just as they handle any other truck.

IN TOUCH WITH WORLD.

"Now we maintain here in Onley a full knowledge of all the markets of the country. We have our own special wire to Philadelphia, and from there we feel the pulse of the market everywhere, for we send our goods even to Canada in the East and Wisconsin in the Northwest. Chicago is a big buyer from us, and we sell to all the important cities between Chicago and the Atlantic Ocean.

"What you can do in Baltimore is to found a subdistributing point. You can sell our goods in Washington, all Western Maryland cities and all of Baltimore's tributary territory in Southern Pennsylvania and other abutting States. We here will do everything possible to aid the trade of Baltimore, and if we can do it by withholding our wires from the Baltimore territory we shall be only too glad to do it. In this way Baltimore could increase her trade immensely. Of course, you would have to provide good transportation -- transportation, in fact, as good as that which the Pennsylvania Railroad furnishes us on its rail lines, but which does not exist on its Chesapeake bay boats."

"It has been suggested, Mr. Burton, that the Eastern Shore of Virginia Produce Exchange is in a position, in view of the mismanagement and inadequacy of the bay-carrying trade, to establish an independent line of steamers on the Chesapeake."

"That is true. The exchange is in a position to do it either as a body or individually among its 3,000 members. What the individuals will do, I cannot say. But I can say that the exchange will never go into the steamboating business. First, it is not in existence as a transportation company. Second, it gets excellent through rates from the Pennsylvania Railroad and has no quarrel with that company, through the people here are undeniably disgusted with the way the bay steamers have handled -- or rather, failed to handle -- goods shipped by boat to Baltimore. I repeat once more: We do not want our through rates disturbed.

WHAT'S THE USE.

"There is no use for us to stimulate the establishment of a new carrying line unless it can give us through rates. This is no threat against Baltimore. It is a plain statement of facts. So far as I can see, while an independent lines of steamers on the bay would be of incalculable benefit to Baltimore and doubtless to the Eastern Shore of Virginia, such a line as might be established would be, so far as I can see, only a local company, with no ability to make through rates. How about the Wabash? Well, that is another matter. Get your transcontinental Wabash running to Baltimore first. I understand it has not yet built its link that will unite Baltimore with the West. Your Wabash seems to be in the future tense."

The wonderful business of this Eastern Shore of Virginia exchange may be appreciated in a measure when the reader is told that in 1906 its telegraph bills amounted to $9,052.59 and its telephone bills to $740.56. This great exchange and its presiding genius, Mr. Burton, handled last year 1,800,329 packages and its gross receipts were $1,760,771.18. Its free-on-board sales in the last 60 days amounted to 500,000 barrels.

Here and there THE SUN correspondent has heard the great crop of white potatoes of this summer referred to as a "glut." There has been no glut, however. The Produce Exchange here has been able to sell every barrel of potatoes at high prices right here and at Onley. Mr. Burton showed THE SUN correspondent the quotations at New York, when potatoes brought even 10 per cent. more at the exchange, with a buyer for every barrel before it was put down by the farmer at a station or on a wharf of Accomac.

There is no glut when white potatoes of the best grade sell for $2.10 a barrel at the farmers' door. There may be a transportation glut, though, when a carrying line of steamers like those of the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic Railway between the Eastern Shore of Virginia and Baltimore falls utterly to prepare for carrying goods between producer and customer, and yet drives off of the public waters of the United States every other carrying line that dares to offer transportation. There is a transportation glut when inadequate wharves are built, when a company making money hand over fist fails to add new boats to its line and when its management is so incompetent and behind the times that it fails to observe the demands of the hour and prepare itself for what every man, woman and child knows is coming.

BEHIND THE TIMES.

When the wharf was built here at Onancock the people warned the company that, as designed, it was only one-fourth as big as it should be. The result is that Accomac truck for the last two weeks has overflowed the wharf and has stood out on the public roads of Onancock. Steamers have been loaded down until their guards scarcely skimmed the surface of the water, and boat after boat has passed the wharves here without taking aboard goods already sold and awaiting shipment. Schedules have been printed on nice steamboat folders, but three, five and even eight hour deviations from these schedules have occurred because the boats were delayed at various points letting off and taking on tremendous freights, and when they tooted their whistles and went on their way they were so heavily laden that they could make nothing like their normal time.

And the passengers -- the poor passengers who had adopted their usual means of transportation between Baltimore and this country -- what did they? Simply shelled out another 75 cents -- increased from 50-- for an extra meal because, when they should have reached Onancock in time for a good home breakfast at the regular price, they were delayed from three hours to half a day and simply had to eat -- at the lately increased price. Will they go to Baltimore on the next trip from home? No. They will go to Philadelphia on the train. By that means they can calculate how they will spend every minute of their time.

ARE BALTIMORE SHOPPERS.

THE SUN correspondent was told of numerous cases of this kind. The women of Accomac and Northampton counties know Hutzler's, Gutman's, Stewart's, Bernheimers' and O'Neill's as well as do the women of Broadway, Fulton avenue, Twenty-fifth and Carey streets. They go shopping in Baltimore with potato money when potatoes are selling at from $1.50 to $2.10 a barrel and when the warm furrows of the Eastern Shore of Virginia are fairly throwing out potatoes for those women's fathers and husbands. And then when on their way home their boat stops at Crisfield for hours to discharge railroad freights destined for all points south of Salisbury, these ladies, instead of arriving at Onancock wharf at 8 o'clock in the morning, as their schedules tell them they will, arrive anywhere from 9 A. M. until 2 P. M., tired, worn out and disgusted. There is no such trouble when they go to Philadelphia. Therefore every retail storekeeper in Baltimore is interested in this bay-trade problem.

But there was an enormous crop of Eastern Shore farm products this season. Did the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic have any warning? Was this not one of those exigencies for which no human agency could provide? Listen:

THEY KNEW IT.

The people here with one voice declare that repeated warnings were given. The Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic was told in advance of the increased acreage and the probable outcome of the planting. Messrs. Burton and Waters, of the Produce Exchange, assert that they repeatedly called the company's attention to the coming problem. But that is not all. Any sane man or child ought to see that this Virginia crop is growing by leaps and bounds each year and requires more effective transportation, yet no new steamboat has been added to the company complement in the last four or five years.

Early in the game this season a telegram was sent from Onancock to one of the Messrs. Joynes connected with the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic. It is given from memory by an Onancock man who read it. It was about as follows:

"There will be 2,000 packages here tomorrow. Arrange to take them. Farmers are kicking."

So, all along the line the warnings have been sounded. The people here recall that when the latest steamers, the Maryland and Virginia, were added to the line the president of the Baltimore, Chesapeake and Atlantic made a nice little speech. They remember that he announced that it would be hereafter the policy of the company to build at least one new steamer every year. That was five years ago, or thereabout. And when the potato "glut" came to Onancock the company added to the line that "palatial and commodious" steamboat the Enoch Pratt, the dear old one-sided decrepit bunch of bones, and put the big Pocomoke or another route.

The people here as individuals have given voice to a new declaration of independence. They want an independent line of steamboats and say they will take stock in it.