PROPOSED SUCCESSOR TO THE PANAMA COMPANY.

Grey River Argus, Volume VIII, Issue 537, 26 June 1869, Page 4

PROPOSED SUCCESSOR TO THE PANAMA COMPANY.

)From the San Francisco Bulletin.) There has recently been a consolidation of coast steamship interest in this city, placing the ownership more largely in local hands, and the direction entirely so. It is- strange that local steamship enterprise has not moved to occupy the new field which must' soon open in the direction of Australia and New Zealand. The service between those countries and I Panama having been abandoned by the ! English company which undertook it without sufficient capital, the way is open for an American Company to pat steamships on the shorter, more economical, and more promising route, between Australia and San Francisco. This route would not only effect a saving of a week or ten days on each trip, and consequently a great saving in fuel and interest, but it would connect the flourishing cities of Sydney, Melbourne, and Auckland with the metropolis of Western America, and with the most direct mail and passenger route to Europe. All the facts in support of this assertion have been too recently detailed in our columns to need repetition. We refer to them only to enforce the remark that the business which, awaits the establishment of this line ought to be in American hands, and ought to be centralised in San Francisco. So much surplus capital is accumulating here now that there is no practical difficulty in the way of securing for this city the ownership of all the steamship lines that may hereafter be needed. Our steam marine must constantly increase, and it offers one of the finest inducements for wise local investment that can be imagined. The example of a Pacific Mail Steamship Company shows how a colossal property may be built up from comparatively small beginnings. The local company that will establish a steam line to Australia, may find it eventually far more profitable than investments in a score of uncertain mines. Congress could be positively relied upon to aid an enterprise promising so much benefit to American commerce, and the traffic of what must one day be an independent English empire already invites it. A city with the advantages and aspirations of San Francisco ought not to be always dependent upon the other side of the continent for the means of carrying on its commerce. It will realise more rapidly its imperial dreams when it becomes broader and longer sighted in its enterprise. The capitalists who shall first gain control of steamship routes on the Pacific, who shall first establish steamship building as one of the local manufactures, will lay the foundations of immense fortunes and honorable reputation. It would be pleasant to see this opportunity embraced by those who have long labored here, and who have risen with the State itself. If these refuse to do what they might, newcomers will be more sagacious ; for it is not in the fates that San Francisco should remain an appanage of New York in respect to the means of conveying and extending its foreign business. As California has its Stanfords, Huntingtons, and Crockers in railways, so it should have its Webbs, Collinses, and Vanderbilts in ocean steamers.