Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-01-18

are IaMlliar elements OF our natural supeItor-
ity. The natural conditions are as favorable
here as anywhere in the world, and here as
large and benefcept returns are TO be locked
tor as anywhere in the world.
In the second place it requires to be duly
weighed, how remarkable an effect is ex erted
by manufactures, where successfully estab-
lished, in enhancing the worth of every COM
modify, resource or capacity TO which value
argument for municipal aid to manufactures
rests upon the question of public recompen-
sation for outlay. 1t is proposed, therefore,
to offer some detail upon the various modes
and degrees in which returns for investments
in manufactures are found by experience to
be realized.
ADVANTAGES TO THE prBLrc OF MANUFAc-
rUREs.
They are realized first in giving new and
additional value to material forces and ca
pacatieS. Thus. without manufacturing, the
water-power of the State, sufficient as it is to
run far more than fifty million cotton spin
dies now operated in Europe and America,
would be worth nothing. With and by man.
ufacturing we see the same motor raised in
adjacent States to capital value upon which
an annual rental of one hundred dollars per
horse power is readily commanded Manu-
featuring calls into requisition vast amount
of human capacity for labor that in the fail
ure of diversified industries is wasted Thous-
ands of the young, the old, the feeble, find
employment in various light handicrafts, for
whom the hardships of thu. field would prove
destructive. Two thirds of the operatives in
cotton mills are women, and in many branch
es of manufacture the whole working force is
drawn from the feebler sex, for which profit
able employment is so difficult to find. Hence
in towns, like Boston and Philadelphia, ply
ing multitude of arts, women are found in
excess of men, because their service is in re-
QUESTION. and because there they can earn
living. A vast amount of faculty of the finer
sort, dexterity of hand, skill, esthetic judg
ment, finds scope for exercise only where
large variety of industry is prosecuted. Thus,
through manufactures, an enormous fund OF
that human labor power that must be used on
the instant, if ever, of time that must be
turned to account as it flies, or never, is made
available for individual welfare and happiness
and for national prosperity.
Hence it is that i'll countries, that, like
Turkey, by their policy discourage home
manufactures, national idleness attans to di-
mansions positively stupendous. Italy, Port
ugal, Spain have become by-words amongst
the nations for the idleness of their peasantry
Their poverty is equal to their idleness. They
are all communicating nations. They do
nothing but till the ground. They do not
do that well. No nation ever did, that did
nothing else.
The great industrial inventions and appli-
cations that have at once given dignity to
bnman notl1rp and rnn+nrt IN hYlmnp lifp
that with the mower, the reaper, the cotton
gin, have lifted its heaviest burden from ag-
riculture, that have displaced the spinning
wheel by tle mule and the hand loom by the
power loom, that have substituted the loco
motive for the horse on the road, and the
marine steam engine for the wind upon the
sea, that have made the steam ship prodigy
and the cotton factory miracle, these have
all taken origin amongst manufacturing
peoples, and are the. product of intelligence
exercised under the tuition of manufacturing.
This great educating power no State that
hopes for high and honorable position
amongst the producing communities of the
world, can afford to give up or to have
abated.
Consider the influence of manufactures
upon compensation for labor. In proportion
as the range of employments is restricted in
any region, competition for service in those
still prosecuted becomes still more urgent.
By consequence wages fall. Accordingly in
countries neglecting manufactures the recon-
pense of the laborer tends to sink lower and
lower, until at last he is extermnated by
hardship or driven off in exile. Ireland with
abundant coal and water-powcr, compelled
by the policy of England to relinquish manu-
features, saw wages for strong men fall to
Cd. dag, with ssnothing to do" at that, her
whole population on the edge of starvation,
decreasing one and half millions in ten
years, and hardly ceasing to be, even with
that decrease, in the language of the London
Times, ga nuisance and curse" So too
with Turkey, a country with immense
natural resources, yielding cotton, wool, silk,
corn, oil, tobacco, and all grains in profusion,
but persuaded by England to exchange raw
products for manufactured goods, and as the
result seeing the wages of men fall to five cents
per day, of women to four cents, and seeing
landed proprietors ruined, villages destroyed,
and whole districts depopulated. Hence
also we find thousands of the young men and
women of this State, those who have no other
capital than their power of labor, compelled
to leave us every year, because in the dearth
of occupations, they cannot sell this labor at
paying rates. So the State stands stationary
as regards population, all the while the few
manufacturing centers making handsome
progress amongst us, and thus Significantly
pointing the way to prosperity.
INCREASED VALUE OF LAND.
Land as well as labor has value in any re-
gion in proportion as labor is diversified in
that region. If the artisan and the operative
who furnish a market for the surplus products
of the farmer are distant from him, the farm
er who mast go to market or see his products fall
to waste or destruction, finds the profits of his
labor consumed by the cost of transportation.
On the three to four hundred thousand bushels
of potatoes exported from Bangor this winter
the Penobscot husbandman has had to pay a
sum equivalent at least to eighty-three per
cent of his net receipts to get them to the eater
in Boston. The Aroostook County farmer
on the same sort of export pays a sum not less
than two hundred sixty-six per cent of his net
receipts for transportation. If he purchases
$50 worth of wooden cloth in Boston the trans
portatiQn of sufficient potatoes to the point to
pay for it, at ruling prices, will cost him
$l4.40. Where the mill stands near his farm
the consumer can buy direct of the producer,
who thus saves what now goes to whole
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