Carson Daily Appeal

The storm that began with the uprising of the wind of adversity which blew out of the region of the Red River of the North withering the prospects of the Northern Pacific Railway and stripping Jay Cooke & Company's sails into shreds, proves to be a simoon before which but a single one amongst the strongest has been able to stand. Clews, Claflin, Fisk & Hatch, the great house of the Spragues, all these have been driven amongst the breakers, and now comes gallant Tom Scott and his Texas Railway to take a share of the general wreck and ruin. This is where something of this Eastern disaster makes itself felt in California. The great need is a competing line—a rival in some sense, to the Central Pacific—or, at any rate, a line connecting the southernmost counties of upper California with the Atlantic States and the general outside world. This break-down of Scott and his associates arrests that project—the Texas Railway, for years, perhaps. So sensitive are all parts of our great, crude, half developed railway system that even a competing line like the Northern Pacific, takes in, in the swirl with which itself is sucked into the Maelstrom, this remote Southern Pacific enterprise. Still, however, the sagacity of the Pennsylvania Central Company deserts them not in this trying time. They know better than to regard Mr. Scott, their splendid Vice President, as the Jonah who has caused their troubles and so throw him overboard—they know better than to do that rash and stupid thing; and so, when he offers to resign and thus take away from their affairs the possible prejudice of his own personal troubles, they tell him, with one united, hearty voice, to remain where he is. Because his ship is blown upon a lee shore and is likely to become a wreck, they are not fools enough to attribute an unavoidable disaster to a lack of skill on his part; and they continue to trust him at the helm of their affairs. Such a firm, courageous stand as this here and there: the occasional display of this sort of courage and good judgment, will, if anything can avert a general sweep of the besom of disaster, cause its averting. Doubtless, Scott, with his magnificent talents for broad-gauge business enterprises and the opportunities which will fall in his way, and which he will not fail to see and seize upon, will speedily retrieve his losses; but now that he and his associates in the Texas Road have fallen under misfortune, and now that Oakes Ames is dead and Daniel Drew is under a cloud and Jay Gould is struggling in the prevailing tide of embarrassments, still serene and calm and strong, sturdy as a monument of adamant, stands the stern old Commodore, his white hairs fluttering in the tempest and his heart as strong as the indomitable heart of Armand Richelieu.