Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-01-19
MUNICIPAL AID TO MANUFAC-
TURES.
No, II.
ADVANTAGES TO THE PUBLIC OF MANUFAc-


| ADVANTAGES TO THE PUBLIC OF MANCFAc-
TUREs-[CoNTINUEp.l
To the Editor of the Kennebse Journal:
Resumng the argument where it was
dropped, namely, in stating the effect of man.
ufactures upon the value of land, we observe,
land like any other resource or commodity is
valued in proportion as it enables the owner
to make money. Land in New York city has
sold at the rate of three million dollars per
acre, and in London at ten million dollars per
acre. The finty and stingy soils of Massa-
chusetts average $50 per dcre in the market,
because a quick sale for every product is
afforded the cultivator by the numerous fac
tories on every hand. The rich deep lime
stone lands of the Aroostook are worth but
$l.25 per acre, and that chiefly Only nom-
nally, because the consumer is so far away.
When manufactures are established in any
district adapted to their reception, at once
every pound of ore, every cubic foot of gram
lite, every square yard of slate every load of
clay for bricks or gravel for embankments or
streets assumes value before unknown.
Last fall throughout this region the fences
bore posters offering fifty cents per ton for
| those curses of the farmer, common field
stone, for ballast for the kennebec Dam, and
the Hallowell quarries disposed of their chips
and debris, hitherto only a nuisance, by the
hundreds of tons for the same purpose.
Every stick of wood in the forest. suitable for
! lumber, for fuel for charcoal; every pound
of flax or wool brings increased return; the
fruits of tree, shrub or vine, too perishable to
l Ne f,,l al.,e IL l,oy, t,a
| ing market wagon converts into cash the
pumpkins, cabbages, beets, the windfall ap-
Piles and other products that before could not
be sold at. any price; straw sells for use in
the paper-mill for more than the best hay
would formerly command; each operative or
artisan withdrawn from the field and from
competition with its cultivator, calls upon the
farmer for about a ton of food per annum,
including the waste, and his dependents in
their proportion. The farmer makes money.
His land rises in value. His buildings and
farm equipments sympathize in the increased
valuation. Farms ten miles distant from
Lewiston already sell for seventy-fve per
cent more than they would bring had not the
mill-wheels of that city been set in motion !;
and farms near the manufacturing towns of
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut
and New Jersey approximate metropolitan
prices.
If Maine does not produce its manufactures
the strength of its land will be sent abroad
for those manufactures. Daily throughout
the year the strength of our soil leaves us in
the droves of cattle, the flocks of sheep, the
schooner-loads of hay and potatoes, that help
feed and fatten otlser States. Ireland tried
this same thing. In the first three years after
the passage of the Act of Union, the export
of grain from that country was 800, 900 quar-
! cd RI fwO nd q hal mill q
the end of thirty years, or %, SOC, 900 bush
els, and cattle, sheep, and dairy products
were exported to the value of millions of
| dollars. Thus the life of her land has been
sold for cotton and wool manufactures which
she should have produced herself, for copper,
lead and iron, which are abundantly found
within her borders. Accordingly estates Of
10000 acres have sold for FIVE cents an acre,
and over extensive districts land has ceased
| to have any value. The same practice in
Turkey has so brought down the price of
land that estates in what was once the garden
of the Empire have sold for So 900, though
twelve miles square, and farms near Smyrna
| have changed hands for six cents an acre.
| Pursuing this policy Maine beholds her fresh
| ly opened territory already the theatre of
migration and partial abandonment. In some
| localities farms sell for less than the cost of
| their buildings or even the stone walls upon
them. AS the returns for labor upon the
exhausted soil become more meagre the cult
vator is seen flying from the land he has
ruined, thus verifying that ''inexorable law"
so powerfully announced-by Carey, that the
''Nation that begins with exporting raw pro-
ducts ends with exporting men,"
| To stop this process of destruction, to help
the agriculture of the State, we need-even
more than we need additional railroads, or
agricultural colleges, or bounties to agricul-
| tural Observation-Disclosures. We must con-
vert the food now sent from us in its raw
state, into shirtings and sheetings, into cassi-
meres and dOeskins, into cloakings and fam
nels, into boots and shoes, into hats and
paper, into cutlery and hardware, into glass
goods, household furniture, and whatever can
be advantageously wrought of human skill.
In this Transmitted form the products of our
land can be exported, and the land be left
richer than before. 1t is Belgium and Eng
| land, the factories and workshops of Europe,
that have carried agriculture to perfection in
the west, fattening their land to more than
Egyptian richness; and it is China in the
east, austerely reserving her national market
for national labor, and practicing every art,
occupation and industry demanded by her
| civilization, that has brought out her land
from the use of over four thousand years, in
miraculous fertility and strength. A manufac-
tured article is simply raw material, food, time
and labor condensed, and changed in form.
Shall Maine 60 on importing these of which
she now has vast surplus, and drug her own
market to still deeper stagnation?
| 1t is only the State or nation that manufac-
lures, that can in the necessary interchange
of commodities, free itself from the heaviest
part of that most terrible and consuming OF
all taxes, the tax for transportation. 1t is
transportation that devours the substance of
the producer like wars or standing armies. A
ton of corn that would bring at home S24.75,
nets the producer nothing at the distance of
one hundred and sixty miles, if transportation
is effected by road, its value being complete
ly absorbed by the cost of moving. BY rail
it can be transported 1000 miles. But the
same ton of corn condensed into cloth, or
cutlery, or other highly elaborated product,
can be carried thousands of miles by road
and ten thousand by rail, without being fully
absorbed. The pound of raw cotton that
could be carried given distance for its value,
could, when converted into yarns numbering
350s, be transported It's times further.
The pound of iron that would hardly be car
ried n furlonp for its value in the raw state,