[for the Dispatch]
Danville, Va., June 20, 1861.
To the Editors of the Dispatch:
--The citizens of Danville and its vicinity have recently taken a move in the right direction.
Under a charter granted by the Legislature a year or two since, a manufacturing company has been organized.
The minimum capital of twenty thousand dollars, (the maximum being five hundred thousand,) was subscribed in a very short time, and to-day the stockholders me and elected their president and directors.
The Board in the evening of the same day confirmed a purchase by the company of one-half of the water power at Danville, from Messrs. Crews, Rodenhizer & Co., with more than half of the ground for sites for manufacturing buildings.
The water of nearly the whole of Dan River, (several hundred yards wide at this place,) can be thrown, at small expense, into the present canal, with a fall of some twenty feet, constituting the best water power in the State, except at Richmond.
There is site and power enough to drive the machinery of a hundred factories.--The company are pushing the enterprise of a woolen factory, (with good prospects of success,) and hope to have it nearly completed by the end of the year.
This may be the only operation that the company will under take in detail — their design and policy is to rent out the power and sites on long leases, with privilege to renew, and, when necessary, aid individual enterprise by putting up buildings for operatives who lack capital.
Buildings can be erected in the shortest time — and oil mills, paper mills, tanneries, button, glass, cotton manufactories and others, could no doubt be soon made profitable.
I could write pages on the mineral resources of the upper Dan, the iron and coal of which will, when properly worked, be made tributary to the full development of the water power — but ‘"verbum sat."’ To the Editors of the Dispatch:
L.
