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About The west shore. (Portland, Or.) 1875-1891 | View Entire Issue (April 1, 1880)
April, 1880. THE WEST SHORE. 103 portation have been ill process of solu tion by the industry, skill and enter prise of our own citizens. Lands are cheap and inviting for homes and for largw enterprises. Forests of fir, spruce, cedar, cotton-wood, ash, maple and oak, need only the hand and the brain of larger numbers of intelligent arlians to mould them into utensils anil vehi cles, dwellings and warehouses, roads and bridges, ships and cargoes for our own and others wants. Resources, like tnesc now open to us, are the factors of fortune in the older States and in for eign countries, They invite settlers to secure and work out like fruits here. TUB RELATIVE PROFIT 01 DUSTK1KS. It is known that labor puts the chief value upon everything we use and wear. It is not the amount of materials which the artisans of Old or New England work up, if wood, or Iron, wool or cot ton, or silk, but the amount of work and skill which they apply to elaborate those materials into engines and useful merchandise. The wool in a suit of clothes costs say one-tenth, and the manufacture and sale costs nine-tenths of what you pay for the whole suit. If you raise and send oil" only the wool, ami niiy and nrmg hack Un clothes, you must make your profit upon one-tenth of the value of the goods, while other persons make their profit on nine-tenths oftho goods. Sup pose you furnish the work for a stock of $10,000 worth of goods in a store, your profit must be $1,000. Commis sions and transportation and storage may be $3,000 or $ .(,000 which would leave $5,000 or $6,ox) for labor. Sup pose that labor or manufacturing is done 111 another fsiatc, or in a lorcign country, the $5,000 or $6,000 will be earned and spent there for the food, clothing, houses, schools, churches, books, papers, anil all the comforts and luxuries, which every family needs, or desires. The result is thl t the manu facturing centres become densely pop ulated; for the people can earn money daily for daily wants. This cash goes into circulation and pays the farmer, gardener, orchard ist, florist, clothier, tailor, shoemaker, tinsmith, grocer, merchant, Carpenter, printer, binder, blacksmith, watchmaker, baker, butch er, teacher, lawyer, minister, physician, or profession is found in civil and social life. Ten dollars paid by one man to another in such a community will pass to another and so on, and thus in a few h will pa) leu times us value. Ten dollars serve the purpose of a hun dred perhaps in a single day. A thou sand will in like Manner pay up ac counts of ten thousand, and five thou sand put in circulation among work men on Saturday night will pay $50, (XX) of debts before a week passes. Such a community always have money to spend, because they can always earn it. This is the secret of the prosperity of England, Scotland and North Ire land, (ilasgow, Dundee, Leeds, Shef field, Manchester, Birmingham, Bel fast and Lyons, are cities which have thriven and grown up from the fruits of labor alone, England imports the raw material at low rates, and works it up into machinery and fabrics lor the markets at home and abroad, The fruit cans and fruit pastes and jellies In OUlgOW are made from cargoes "I fruits imported from the tropics. The cordage and sail cloth of Dundee are made from the coarse flax of Russia, The linens of Belfast are mostly made from fibre grown in other countries. The finest linen fabrics of Leeds ate from Belgium flax. All these manu facturers rejoice to find a region that can raise good flax, which they can im port at $300 or $300 per ton. They w ill add by labor xx to 1,000 per cent, to the value of the raw matei ial. With factories in full operation al home, and open, free markets abroad, they can win anil absorb the wealth of the world. What is true of wool and of woolen goods is true also of wooden and iron goods, of stone and clay, and of all manufactures. Employ a people even on small wages, ami they will, if economical, prosper and become inde pendent ami rich. The gains nre largely in favor of the aiti.aiiK. But export raw materials, and you will soon spend your tenth in buying back the goods to which others by la bor, skill, and care, have added nine lent lis. 1 1 1 1 1 1 oy HOMI iM II mi s ucoN LOCAL VALUES. It is population which gives value to land. The more farmers nnd farm, the higher land rises in market rate. druggist, oculist, banker, boatman, j Cultivation is better, products are more railroad-man, or whatever other trade jahuudant,and in grcalci variety. Farm ing land in England, interspersed with large towns and cities, is worth from $ux to $500 per acre. In New Eng land, farms, though of worn, thin soil, are held high, and were it not for cheap Western hinds, prices would steadily gain with the growth of home industries, The same is true in New Vork, Pennsylvania) and Ohio. Lands in the I'ppei Mississippi valley advance in price with the increase of mituilfiic tun s. The reason is plain. The pro ducers of foods, of the lumber, and metals, and clays, and stone, nnd other Materials for labor, find a ipiick and profitable home market. This keeps money 111 ciicuiiuion all the venr. r,- erj worker and producer shares in the payments, and becomes a good pur chaser, and thus real estate advances steadily. Thi prosperity brines more of the comforts, and refinements, nnd luxuries, and independence of life, to ever) Industrious ami prudent family. Contrast this with the sale and export of raw materials to be worked into fabrics and merchandise by foreign ar tisans, while we pay out all the income of our fields, pasinies, forests, mines and fisheries year after year to buy our clothing, furniture, utensils, farming Implement!, machinery, and many ar ticles of food, ami all of our luxuries. It is imt strange that we have hardly enough left to pay laves, It is not Strange that farms are mortgaged for foreign gold. It is not strange that manufacturing countries like England, Prance and ( lermany, who have to buy -1, ,(kxj of bushels of our wheat on SCCOUnt of their poor harvests are yet able to pay us in goods, ami to win back their gold, ami thus turn the tables upon us who are mostly producers of the raw materials. The New England and Middle Stales have become able to compete with foreign manufacturers in a few lines of g Is, ami thus save their money at home, 01 w in it back, but the Western farmer, and . 1 . . t . 1 11 , the fanners .l tin I'mili. Northwest, and nil the people with them, arc held at the mercy of the foreign manufacturer, and the money lenders. Merchants pet form the exchange and get their commissions, and win or lose just ns the markets turn. The chief facts are that the manufacturer puts from fifty to sixty pel ' cut. of the value on all goods that we buy, or use by his labor and skill, up.. n them. In some cases hit