OUR AMERICAN LETTER. AMERICAN SUBSIDY TO THE STEAMSHIP LINE. San .Francisco, August 10.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume XXVI, Issue 4078, 16 September 1870, Page 3

OUR AMERICAN LETTER. AMERICAN SUBSIDY TO THE STEAMSHIP LINE. San .Francisco, August 10.

Carried away, as are the people of all America, by the excitement consequent on the progress of the Franco-Prussian war, I can hardly bring myself to talk or write of anything else. Doubtless also your readers ■would be more gratified if I at once plunged in media reruni bellicosarum, but I must resist the temptation, and fear disappoint them by enlarging on the far more prosaic, though considerably more pertinent, subject of the proposed subsidy to a line of powerful ateameis plying between this port and Auckland, touching at Honolulu, and having its tcrinmns at Sydney. And by the way, too, the subject of the war has a boaimg. an important one, en this subject, as indeed on neaily all others. Unless by the exhaustion of France, it can hardly progress long, without the neutrality of Luxembourg or Belgium being violated by one or other of the contending paities, and this inevitably brings England into the vortex. Thus at once, you in Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney, are made dependent on America for manufactures, news, &c , for no merchant of Manchester, Liveipool, Glasgow, Bnminghaia, or London would risk his goods at sea, wlum they had to be carried 18,000 miles, constantly m danger of capture by the enemy's cruisers. And it would behove you, too, to have an American line, otherwise youi remoteness would hardly protect your own vessels. But, putting war altogether out of the question, it is evident that Nature herself has connected New Zealand with America rather than with Europe ; and that even communication with the latter can be better cairied on across a highly-civilised and enterprising continent than through the wilds and wastes of Egypt, &c, or through the^tempestuous and stormy ocean, which has to be traversed for a distance exceeding the earth's semi-circum-feronee. America, nay, this State, will in a few years be able to supply you with all the merchandise you require at rates rivalling those of England ; and the great onHownig wave of American population, constantly seeking the West, will reacli your suoils, | those of Australia, China, Japan, and the innumerable isles of the Pacific. True, for a long time, wo hei c shall be aide to absorb all the surplus population that finds its way to our shores ; but a change will come, and, without lookiug further forward, Ameucan citizens are fast peopling, and Ameiican entei pi ise fast developing the resources of the Sandwich Islands, an outpost tow aids you. The subject of the line is receiving throughout all America, and particularly in San Francisco, tliat attention -wliicli its irnpoi tancc demands ; and early next session of Congress you may expect to hear of a yearly subsidy of 8200, 000, or £60,000 steilmg, voted. It would have passed before the close of the late one, but that selfish interest, the bane of our political system, prevailed in shelving it. You must know that the Pacific Central Railroad Company have command of a poweiful and influential ring, and they i wish to monopolise the carrying tiade between j this city and ISlew York. But they sustain a i very active opposition from the Pacific ' Steamship Mail Company, who viii lines of , steameis from San Francisco to Panama, and f rom Aspinwall to ISTew Yoik, chaigmg for first class accommodation €20, and for second .£lO, while the lailway in the same ca.so levies £o0 and £15 respectively. Besides, tho Steamship Company carry wool and other commodities considerably cheaper. "Xow, the railw ay people wanted to induce the mail company to draw off its live fiist-cLi^b steameis fiom the Panama route and run them between this city, yours, and Sydney, turning all the passenger traffic overland. But they failed, nevertheless still had power to compel the question of the subsidy to go over, but you may be sure of its passing early during tho coming session of Congress. — The industnal condition of this State is fast impiw ing, and we are fast recovering already from tho depiction, which, liai luuiy u\ci business of all kinds for the last eight or nine months. This, in a State of .such resouices as ours, with .so genial a climate, and <-o feitile a soil, was altogether anomalous, and was bi ought about by a combination of artificial causes, such as a mania for land speculation, high rates of interest, clearness* of labour and its products, and the commeicial chaos, caused by the revolution consequent on the completion of the overland railway. The Litter event, bringing our local manufacturers more duectly into competition with those of the East, aheady seeking mukets removed from home, caused a lessened pi oduction, and tlnew many out of employ- . inent, at the same time that the services of those labourers who built the railroad weie dispensed with. Hence mass meetings of unemployed labourers, hence many ' cases of leal distress, and efforts, public and private, made foy ita amelioration. Bat that may now be considered as neaily all passed | away. Four months since, when I first was j greeted by a sight of the shores of the fai- | famed California, it seemed as though the \ said California was fast going to the dogs, I and that there would soon, with the local I unemployed increased by the inpouiing j stream of emigrants, be nothing short of a i famine; but that is now all passed away, and even the commencement of work, which •would absorb the mass of compulsory idlei-., is regarded with apathy, such is the quickness with which everything is recuperated in this country. Owing to the drought with which the Wcsb of Europe is afflicted, and the cold and wet season which has fallen upon the East, there -will be an extraordinary demand for our breadstuff's. The war, j too, is in our favour, so that our farmers j have a good prospect opened out before them, and you in the colonies must make up your minds to pay a little more for the raw material of the staff of life. We have manufactures of all kinds extensively cairied on, save those of woollens, silk, cottons, and iron ; and we have a largely increasing export trade to all parts of the Western coast of this continent, from Alaska to Chile, to the Sandwich Islands, and even to China and Japan. A silk factoiy is about being started, and the southern part of our State is well adapted for the rearing of the silk-woim, and the cultivation of the mulberry. Labour, too, has, instead of continuing its resultless contest with capital, begun to organise itself co-operatively, and with success : the shoemakers have five co-operatic associations, the marble masons one, the lady printers another ; and, even throughout the depressed times that we have had, these associations did not cease to nourish.

THE NEEDLE-GUN v. THE CHASSEPOT. — HAGENAU AND SAARBRUCK. You have ere now heard of the war being declared between France and Prussia ; yon will now learn that the contesb has commenced in earnest, and goes up to the present againgt the former. There are immense armies in the field, not less than a million on each side. The Prussians are now said to have 800,000 on the soil of France. It is truly a war of Titans, and how it will end, or where, cannot even now be inferred. After various skirmishing, hostilities comraeuced on the part of France by driving the Prussians from Saarbruck, a forti6ed town of Rhenish Prussia, near the French frontier. This was followed by a successful attack of the Prussians under the Crown Prince on the fortified town of Weissenbourg, in French territory, near the Rhine, and on the right wing of the latter. The Prussians here took 500 prisoners, but they were driven back by Marshal McMahon the following day. And now conies the real tug of war. On Saturday, the 7th August, the Prussians, who seemed to have been much better handled than the French, were massed in two divisions, one under the Crown Prince, and the other under General DeGoeben,and hurled in overwhelming numbers, the former against the right wing of the French army, the latter against the left. When I speak of wings here, I mean the extreme ends of the line, over two hundred miles long, in which the French were posted. In both cases, after a raging contest for ten hours, the French were driven back at all points, and the whole liae of their army was forced to re-

treat. The Prussians are now preparing to reduce Metz, pielmiinary to marching on Paris, : at least they propose this to themselves. But there's many a slip between the cup and the lip. The Emperor is ill at Chalons, and all France is called to arms. Paris is preparingtoresistasiego. An immense flotilla — 350 ships and 100,800 men — are embarking for tlio Baltic fiom Boulogne to threaten the Prussian capital. The battle where the Crown Prince commanded is known as that of Ilagenau ; the other as that of Saarbruck. They both, in my opinion, prove that neither needle-gun, nor Chassepot, nor death-dealing Mitrailleuse can be put in the scale against generalship and valour. There is no doubt but that the defeat of the French is atti ibutable to the bad generalship and hesitancy of Napoleon, who has now resigned the' chief command to Marshal Bazaine. The people of Paris arc in an awful ferment, and 1 should not wonder if Nap. gets left out m the cold, on account of his allowing the Fi encli arms to be disgraced. The war (ovcept on the hypothesis, a not very tenable one, of the Kiench bom^ immediately crushed) will not end till it Las involved' every nation of Europe ; till thrones ciumble befoie it, and the landmarks of mighty kingdoms and empires shall have been removed for ever. Viator.