The entire mercantile community of Sau Francisco are chagrined and disgusted at the policy announced by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, Having severed all connection with the transcontinental railroad companies, it now seeks to declare war against regardless of the fact that this city is converted into a sort of shuttlecock to be driven to and fro between the rampant battle dores,. Its present Directors seem to have quite forgotten that the Pacific Mail Comis the creature of San Francisco, owes its existence and prosperity to this maritime queen of the Pacific, and that the subsidy granted it by Congress was bestowed solely consideration of the service it rendered to our commercial interests, Now, we are pla-
to China and Japan is to be discontinued sidly informed that the semi-monthly service that San Francisco is hereafter to be only a port of call—n way-station for landing the mails—and that the steamers from China and Japan will proceed directly to Pan ma after touching at this port. It claimed by the company that Government declines to pay subsidy for monthly service because it is not performed in iron steamers, us per contract; but that it will, be renewed as soon as the iron ips, now in an advanced stage of construotion, shall be ready to take place on the China and Japan line, But, it may be permitted us to inquire, why break up the regular connections which have existed for so long a time, when it is proposed to renew them within a few months? Why abandon the field to foreign rivals, when it can be retained st so business to fall into the hands of thers, when little comparative expense? Why permit its
the splendid new iron propellers City of Yeddo and City of Pekin, of 6,000 ton: be ready for duty That the business denied. It is sufficiently so to induce an English unsubsidized company to enter the lists with such steamers as the Vasco da Gama and her consorts. Surely, the Pacific Mail Company would consult its best interests cly continuing the semi-monthly service, even were it done with a margin of loss. But this
Through the agency of the regular steamer far from being the only point of controversy. trade between this city and ports in China and Tapan, San Francisco hias signally enlarged the field of her interior commercial relations, and it will be a sad derangement of her business to cease her semi-monthly intercourse with the Orient; but it is even more staggering under the assurance that hereafter it will only port of call between New York on one side, and Hongkong and Yokohama on the other. The trip from Hongkong to Panama, by way of San Francisco, and immediately back again, is the longest ever projected for any steamship, and we venture to assert that it cannot be performed with safety. 'The boilers will not stand the test of such unremitted strain; no fire bars can stand it; platinum would' give out, and even asbestos would crumble to pieces.
It may be well enough for the merchants of New York to import their tea silk, and other Oriental goods by way of Panama, and thereby constitute her the great distributing mart for the whole Atlantic slope, but it may well be doubted whether St. Louis, Chicago, Cincinnati, and the great army of consumers in the central portions of the Union, would be blessed to select thnt roundabout service in place of the direct one furnished by the rail-Yoads. That peculiar policy which would sacrifice the commercial interests of this city because of contention between the transcontinental railroad companies and the Pacific Mail Company is mot one which will commend itself to the acceptance of our business men. It is well known that many of our mercantile houses receive orders from China and Japan to be filled larly every month, and heretofore the Mail Company has given preference to these orders, so that as soon astir was announced that a'steamer would sail on a certain day, the merchandise included in those orders was immediately put on board. When it was officially published that the Alaska would leave'on the Ist of January, 1874, merchants having such orders to fill discovered to their infinite chagrin that a couple of speculating Chinese houses had pre-en; the entire freight capacity of the vessel for the purpose of forwarding a large invoice of flour, to the exclusion of old, regular customers. If this is the policy which the com as may out for its its guidance, the merchants of San Francisco will soon devise some means for self-protection. In its efforts to choke off the railroad companies, it is strangling itself, and may finally conclude by throwing its busines: into the hands of foreign rivals who are not blinded by animosities.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.