Juniata sentinel. [volume] (Mifflintown, Pa.) 1846-1873, 1871-01-18
Three Miles up The Old Highways. Iron
Ore, Protection, Manufactures, Free
Trade and the Democracy.

nree miles up Tue river, tuTtt Huts
mp the pike, or, if the reader choose to
name the third and last of the defunct
highways and say. three miles up the
canal, we are satisfied. Over the first of
the three highways, the natural highway
the one the Indians used, the river, the
one, too, over which our pioneer fore
fathers foated in Hat -bnt'omed boats to
eastern markets the limited produce of
our valleys, and returned their boats Ia
dened with exchange goods over the
same course, by a process of polling" p"
the magnitude of the labor cf which we
cannot comprehend, though we receive
an account of the work from the lips of
our grandfathers. The increased pros
perity of the country laid the pike and
ditched the canal, and the great wagons
with their white covers. and stately
teams with their tingliug bells, aud the
stage-coach with its gay and dashing
four, and the white smoothly-gliding
packet with its green shutters and biz
windows" and broad tenders, and the
crowded emigrant boat, were childhood
scenes of every day occurrence. These
scenes are not now witnessed. The old
highways are defunct. The railroad ad-
ministered dose of competition that
killed them
If the reader goes up three miles along
the right side of these old travel and
freight courses, to the farm known to our
fathers as the Adam Hoffman farm, and
70 the community latteriy as the Geib
farm, which borders on the pike, and ex-
tends north ward to the Shade Mountain.
be will have reached the tract cf land on
which it is said great veins of ore have
been found and opened. We do not
vouch for the truth of these reports. We
only say that it is so said; but if we
dare suppose that every word be true, if
we dare suppose that the half has no;
been told, and further suppose that the
thickness of the veins and the richness
Of the ore equals that found in the hills
about Danville, we certainly dare ask, is
it not highly probable that under pro-
tective tariff, which fosters manufactures,
that the prosperity which attends Dan
vile, in Montour county, and Johnstown,
in Cambria county, may some day attend
the district three miles above Miffiin
Protective tariffs build up manufacturing
establishments, and manufacturing estab-
lishments build up towns and give en-
ployment to thousands. Remove the
manufacturing establishments from Phil
adelphi, from Harrisburg, from Johns
town, from Danville, or break them up by
free trade, and the present generation of
those towns would experience as great
change in the backward direction as that
experienced in the forward direction by
"Rip-Van-Winkel'' after his twenty years
Of sleep.
We trust that the reports concerning
ore on the Geib farm may all prove to be
true reports. But of this the community
can rest assured, that although the Geib
farm constituted one inexhaustible bed of
iron ore. no prosperity can be derived
from it by either its owners or the COM
munity, if the free trade principles of
the Democracy be adopted by the coun-
try. Free trade, if adopted, will destroy
our manufacturing establishments, and
prevent the further development of our
mineral resources.