Clarksville weekly chronicle. (Clarksville, Tenn.) 1873-1890, 1874-12-12

Q and yourselves to prosper and gro
3 rich. you must act and do something I
show the people Of the world aroun
. you that you have both energy and en-
terprise. They already know that 20
: have money, and when you work thos
three things properly together, Clarks
vile can be made. very soon, a liv
manufacturing town. You must no
wait for outsiders to take the lead, bu
do SO yourselves, and otherS will Ger
tainly follow. 1t won't do for you t,
. walk around on the streets with you
hands in your pockets and conten
yourselves with the idea that you
money is paying you from twenty t.
forty per cent. in the shaved notes O.
your bankrupt neighbors, or six pei
cent. gold" in United States bonds
(which by the way, think, is one Of
the greatest curses of our country,
and wait for emigrants to come in and
furnish all of the energy, enterprise
and means necessary to build up man
ufactories, &c. If you do, neither
yourselves nor your children will ever
see Clarksville manufacturing town,
and without manufactures she cannot
prosper. In the days of slavery, and
before you had railroads, you were
growing rich on your tobacco market.
That thing now, to great extent, is
/ played out, and it will not do for
you to depend upon it longer; for
what was once your own exclusively,
is now divided between yourselves,
Hopkinsville, Henderson, Paducah,
Louisville and Nashville; and l may
also add the lack of reliable labor. If
you had done your duty a cotton
factory, that | suppose is now in sue
cessful operation In Chattanooga, c might
have been running in CIarksville,
furnishing work for probably more
than one hundred hands and three
times that many customers for your
merchants. You might have had
large Brewery and plenty of home
made" lager to drink, just by the SELL
ing of suitable lot for that purpose,
and thereby kept enough of your money
at home to start at least one manufac-
tory. Your Cooperative Manufactur-
ing Company might nov have been
doing good work for your town, had
not your energy and enterprise been so
easily drowned out and allowed to ride
away upon the rippling waves of the
first big rise of Cumberland river.
And now again, you have another op-
portunity to do something in the way
of the much talked Of Wrought
Iron Wagon Manufactory.
Are you going to take the lead in
that enterprise? or are you going to
wait for the Grangers to put the Bali
in motion? whilst you sit in your easy
chairs as you usually do and sing wait
for the wagon, without Offering to help
to hitch up the team? IF you
continue to do this much longer you
will find that all Of the teams neeessa-
ry will be harnessed up and driven at
some other places, and you will have
nothing else to do but to wait for the
wagon" You will excuse me, fellow
citizens, for getting off of my subject,
for it was not my intention to-diseuss
manufactures in Clarksville, and if you
don twant them it is none of my bust
ness, but you want emigration, and the
only way to get it, to any extent, is by
manufacturing enterprises. And if you
want these enterprises started, you must
take the lead yourselves. And when
you take the lead and show a DISPOSE
tion to lead right, you will find that
emigration in the shape of money and
people too will pour in and assist you
to pull through. As you are now, you
offer no inducements to emigrants. If
they come you have no houses to rent
them. and if they by chance should rent
houses, there is no way offered them to
make the money to pay the rents. You
have merchants enough to supply all
of the demands of customers, and those
merchants!have all the clerks they need.
You have hotels and boarding houses
enough, and drinking saloons in abun-
dance. and so long as you are deter
mined to own but one house and live
in that yourself, you have plenty of
building mechanics. So there is moth
ing for new conner to do, it matters
not how good mechanic or citizen he
may be.
Now if you will permit me to make
a suggestion, l will say, invest your
money in good manufacturing enter
prises, and have them judiciOusly man
aged by putting good men at the head
of them, and build at least one hun
dred small cottage houses for the ope-
ratives to live in, and you will soon
find that you are paid much better than
by holding United States bonds or
bankrupt notes. In the first place, you
would give employment to your build
ing mechanics, and the money paid
them would pass through their hands
and flow back to your own pockets.
The houses would rent for enough to
pay you from eight to twelve per cent
The money invested in manufactures
would pay you ten per cent. or more.
Your population would be greatly in
creased and the value of your real es-
! tate almost doubled. Aud then, when
you have done this, you need not tronble
yourselves further about emigration,
for it will come, and those that are
here will stay. If you don't believe
all of this, go and see what has been
done in some other towns that are not
half so we'll situated for manufactur-
ing purposes as Clarksville. With
enough energy and enterprise diffused
through our veins there would be no
better town to live in than Clarksville,
and no better State to claim as our own
! H., .oklo IL r-.o-.u.