Daily American Telegraph

Internal Improvements in Alabama:
Individual energy in any project of human enterprise is capable of accomplishing much good to the country; and the one mind conceiving and controlling is the best assurance of its success. Without enumerating numberless instances in practical life to illustrate this remark, it gives us great pleasure to apply it in relation to the State of Alabama, now actively engaged in the work of improvement in rail and plank roads, the last of which, through the energy of one of the most practical men in Georgia, John G. Winter, esq., has become a not inconsiderable feature of State prosperity. More than seventy miles of plank road are now in operation in Alabama, realizing the greatest expectations of the best friends of the system. So far as gates have been erected, the returns are from ten to twenty per cent. As the roads extend, the tolls increase. Lands adjacent to them have become far more valuable, although but a year and a half have elapsed since the first plank was laid. Public carriers offer to contract for hauling twenty-two miles for ten cents a hundred, but cannot obtain the price! Estimating corn at fifty cents, fodder at seventy-five cents, and the transit at one dollar per day, the carrier can make money if he can get steady employment at ten cents a hundred each way for a distance of fifty miles.
The greatest difficulty in the building of plank roads in Alabama has been in the want of saw-mills to supply the plank. Montgomery is, however, doing much to overcome this difficulty, by her steam saw-mills, in which, we learn, from two hundred and fifty to three hundred thousand feet of lumber can be cut by a single upright saw in one month.
The town of Wetumpka has been greatly benefited by these roads—indeed almost resuscitated from a state of lethargy to one of unusual activity. She has now radiating, north, south, and east, fifty-four miles complete, and twenty-six miles graded ready for planking. The last contracts were let out at two thousand dollars per mile complete, and the contractor is realizing a profit from them.
Such are some of the effects of these improvements in Alabama. A similar state of facts might be stated in relation to Georgia, did her railroads not entirely overshadow all her other improvements. It is gratifying to know that our Southern States are so actively engaged in giving to themselves high positions in the Union, and becoming more and more useful in their relations to commerce.