Independent Statesman

LETTER FROM WASHINGTON.

A Striking Contrast—The Washington Market Company—The Growth of Washington—Facts Concerning Dram Drinking—A Conundrum—Destitution in Europe.

WASHINGTON, Nov. 22.

There is a lull, now the gathering of the remnants of the Army of the Cumberland, have unveiled the statue of Thomas—the biggest General of the War of the Rebellion—is over before Congress assembles next Monday. The Confederates in that body will assemble under discouraging circumstances. At the close of the last Congress, the Presidency seemed secure within their grasp. Now the extra session which they forced to improve their position, has destroyed all hope of success and brought them to sure defeat. No plotting or scheming can save them. The country has become aroused to the desperate character of the Democratic leaders so fully that it did not need the warning notes of Matt Carpenter, in his recent interview—all too true—or their purpose in attempting the burglary of the Maine State government, for further stimulants.

A recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in favor of the Washington Market Company, may have an interest to New Hampshire readers, in view of the fact that it is a New England enterprise, and at one time, and I think it is so now, seven of its thirteen directors were natives of New Hampshire. A charter was granted for a Market House by Congress, which, for some reason, the original holders were unable to build, and it was transferred to new hands, who were mainly New Englanders, and who have built one of the finest market houses in the country. The right to occupy stalls was sold for two years, and when the time came for a resale, it was resisted and the company enjoined from selling; and for four years the case has been in the courts until a decision was reached a week ago in the Supreme Court, confirming the right of the company to sell. This company has encountered from the market dealers and the old settlers and part of the District Court the same kind of treatment which has been meted out to northern men and northern capital farther south, in spirit, but in a modified form. This hostility is growing weaker as the city becomes more northern in tone and sentiment. In this regard, it is changing rapidly. Nineteen-twentieths of the improvements of the last five years have been made with northern capital, or by men of northern birth; and that will be the result in the future.

Washington is destined to become a great city, as the capitals of all great nations have become. It has a delightful climate for eight months in the year, and the remaining four are spent by those who can afford it in the mountains and by the seashore. Commerce and manufactures, with all its advantages from location and great water power, will always be a secondary consideration here. The Government expenditures do for Washington what commerce does for New York and manufacture does for the inland cities of New England. The city is growing rapidly from wealthy people of cultivated tastes, and wealthy people of fashionable inclinations who come here to live, where they find a winter Saratoga. As there are fifty people growing rich North and West to one South, it will be seen how fast the tone and sentiment of Washington is changing. To come back to the Market House, I think half its ownership is in the hands of Wm. E. Chandler, N. G. Ordway, Matthew G. and Samuel Emery, who are natives of Suncook.

You did well to question the statement of Miller's Portsmouth Weekly, which credits Representative Hall with saying he sees more drunkenness about Dover than in Washington. If the honorable member made the statement surely he must shut his eyes when he passes through the office-room of the hotel where he boards. More rum is sold at the bar of that hotel than in all the hotels in Dover and all the rest of the hotels in Strafford County added. If he had looked into his Report of the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, he would have found there were in the District of Columbia (practically Washington) eleven hundred and five retail liquor dealers to nine hundred and thirty for the whole State of New Hampshire; and of wholesale liquor dealers thirty-seven to twelve.