White Cloud Kansas chief. [volume] (White Cloud, Kan.) 1857-1872, 1871-07-06
THE DISEASE THAT KILLS TOWNS.

There is so much concentrated good sense in the
following from the Iowa State Register and applica-
bic rs well to other towns as to Des MOines, that
we copy:
An intelligent gentleman, man of fine bust
ness reputation and large capital, now on q visit
to our city, said to us yesterday:
YOu have fine town here, one that is substan-
tial and solid now, but its greatest wealth is in
the future. You are building it up well and rap
dly, but yOu are not laying your foundations SO
wisely as you might. You can't make this town
what you would like to have it, simply with stores
and offices. You hope and expect to make it the
metropolis of Iowa. 1t will never be this, if you
continue to fashion and build in the manner you
are now doing. You can't he a great town
without the elements that make great towns to
HELM YOU. portion of these nature has prOvl-
ded you with. Indeed she has been generous with
you, exceedingly generous. But on these very
things, and your location, you are relying TOO
much. YOu are not the first town suffering from
that disease, which might not inaptly be called
commercial consumption, manifest destiny-and if
you don't mind you will not be the last one to die
with it. More towns have died with this disease
than with any other half dozen. don't know,
but think You folks have got it badly. think
may say am sure yOu have. To me the evidences
are quite plain that, while you have done well,
you have not done half so well as you might:
You have not wrested from your superior advan-
tages one-fourth Of the benefit that they could
have been made to confer upon you. 10 state
with bluntness what believe with all my heart,
you have all the while firmly believed that the
greatness of Des MOines was dead sure thing, was
surely coming some time, and that, in the mea-
time, you could live on the profits of a yard
of calico and a bushel of grain. If You haven't
believed this, why haven't You bnilt more manu-
factories and secured more railroads. 1 put
manufactures before railroads, and for your
town first before anything else. Here you are, in
the centre of the finest agricultural State in the
Union, filed mp with class of farmers who use
Ipnr I,Iuav han fafh Enn nf hay
pay millions of dollars every year for this ma
chinery. How much of this money would you get,
could You supply them with what they want
Orer ORe-kaD oft How much do YOU get as it is |!
Scarcely any oft. And yet You have every adj
vantage for superior manufacturing point.
Manufactures would bring you money and popu-
lation. Start dozen factories, as You should I'M
mediately, and which would pay immensely, and
what would they do for You, financially and nu-
Saying each one would employ fifty
hands, each one would add to your population at
beast two hundred persons-the twelve, twenty
four hundred.
While these twelve factories would bring capt.
tai here, and draw hundreds of thousands of dol
lars of trade that is yours, but which You never
get, what would their six hundred labOrers do for
you! They would earn $1,000 week, almost all
of which would pass into your city circulation,
into the hands of shOp-keepers and dealers,
quickening with the only red blood that will
quicken it, Saturday night. The trouble with
ou ho" II, tuat IL Is the MANY WHO nave sOlne-
thingtO sell, and the few who have to buy. Hence
the grrmble about the scarcity of money You have
in circulation. Where do you expect money to
come from! There are hardly any of you making
anything that will make money. You are only
making per cents on things made by towns that
have manufactures. What you must do is to
make the whole dollar at home, on your own an
vii, and Them when it is put in circulation, yOu
will have all, and not merely one-tenth of its
benefit. You must some of you produce, create,
coin-not 80, nearly all of you merely retail, ped
die and barter, playing at commercial jackstraws,
and trying to make living and a fortune by
selling one another the straws.