The Kanzas news., 1858-02-27
Western Manufactures.

If as philosophers say tttheFe Is good In
things eyil,'' it is not improbable that the
monetary convulsions which have lately be-
fallen US may eventually result to our ad-
vantage, and the golden West, rich in all
the natural elements of prosperity, may rea-
sonably expect that the present trouble will
be but temporary both in its duration and
effects. 1t may even be doubted If the pres
ent partial stagnation is not but as cloud
which ushers in a new and more permanent
era of sunshine and prosperity. The rich
and undeyeloped resources of the West,
will offer strong inducements to the mer-
chant and manufacturer, tired of the un-
profitable and exhausted operations of the
Eastern States, and it is to this class par
ticularly that the West now offers warm
welcome aud rich reward. Heretofore
the emigration to the West has consisted
principally of agriculturists, who, while
they have developed the productive capaci-
ty of our fertile prairies, have contributed
comparatively but little to those manufact-
uring and commercial enterprises which
would render US independent of our for
eign friends, who have always found in the
West a market for those manufactured
wares which we had neither the machinery
or the skill requisite TO produce. True they
received our surplus products in payment,
but at price which, after deducting the ex-
pense of transportation, both on the grain
exported and the merchandise imported,
left but a small profit to the West. An ad-
vocate of s'free trade might assert that
this interchange of exports aud imports
promoted the wealth of both the East and
the West, but this argument, fallacious in
general is particularly inappicable TO the
present case. The manufacturing and COM
mercial systems of the sea-board States,
are in intimate and mutually dependent re-
lations with similar systems in other cOun-
tries, and between them is carried on an ex-
change of luxury and taste as yet compara-
lively unknown TO the West but the ope
ratives of the East depend entirely on the
West for those supplies of agricultural pro-
ductions necessary for their daily subsist-
ence and by repaying US in goods of Eastern
manufacture, have been enabled to draw
from us our surplus wealth. Manufactures
and commerce are the keystone of national
wealth, but why should We pay the expense
of transportation of supplies to a portion of
the Eastern operatives, the products of
whose labor is by another expensive trans
portation returned to us in payment, when
these same operatives could SO much more
cheaply be maintained in our midst, and
the prosperity of our towns and cities be
promoted by their residence among US?
The inducements to develope the manu-
featuring resources of the West were never
more encouraging than at the present time.
The capitalists and manufacturers of the
East are looking for new fields of opera
tons in which to retrieve the losses of the
late revulsions. Thousands of that class
of operatives, in which the West has here
tofore been deficient, would now gladly
commence their emigration westward could
they feel certain of obtaining employment
at the peculiar labor for which they are best
fitted, and to which they have been ac-
customed. s-s,'
1t requires but little investigation to show
the feasibility and profit of manufacturing
in the West, and it is to be hoped that sub
iect will receive the attentive consideration
of men of enterprise, and that hereafter our
imports may be superseded by articles of
our own manufacture, and our exports be
repaid to us in the specie and tangible wealth
which has heretofore been drained from us
by our manufacturing friends at the East
Davenport Gazette. .a-r#