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