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Speculation and Extortion.

We have reason to know that our previous publications on the greed of avarice have met with the approval of the intelligent masses of the people, while certain ill-natured communications from interested persons show that the goad has touched a tender part though it may not thus far have produced any visible effect. It is the duty of the press to hurl anathemas against the grinding, grasping system of speculation and monopoly just now rife in the Confederate States, and we shall not fail to do so whenever an illustration is furnished. Much has been written and said upon the salt question, the universal sentiment of the people being decidedly averse to paying an exorbitant and unreason able price for that indispensable article, and an instance was recently communicated to us by a correspondent wherein prompt measures were resorted to. Some time during the spring or summer a firm in a neighboring city consigned to a merchant of Clarksville a considerable quantity of salt. The price of the article has varied in that place, but generally on an ascending scale; though the later quotations were some five dollars lower per sack than in the city market. From some cause, which we leave the reader to infer, the consignment was recently ordered back, and the consignees, to whom no blame attacks, proceeded to re-ship the very scarce and necessary article in question, and succeeded in sending off by the train, on the 6th inst., fifty sacks. There still remained sixty-nine sacks, and Mr. Henry Wood, the President of the Roanoke Valley Railroad, positively interdicted its transportation over his road. The reasons by which he was governed were that there was no supply of salt in Clarksville to meet the necessities of the people, and that, when once in the city market, it could never be gotten out of the hands of speculators at any price, if the object is, as alleged, to monopolize the pork-packing business, and thus compel the country people to submit to enormous prices for bacon during the coming year. The act of the President may be regarded by some persons as high-handed, but it was endorsed by the almost unanimous sentiment of the Clarksville community. The people there act upon the law of self-preservation, and while they are willing to pay a fair market price for the salt, do not intend to be deprived of it without a prospect of supply from other sources; and in this light the conduct of Mr. Wood rises from an arbitrary proceeding to the dignity of a public benefaction. The question may again be asked, in view of the many instances of the speculating mania which have lately been developed — if we are to be borne down to the earth by our own people, of what avail will be our deliverance from Yankeedom?

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