The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1877-04-06


We have already had occasion to allude
to the multiplication of American indus
tries, as growing out of the present
financial condition, and the condition OF
the labor market. The matter is of such
vital importance as to warrant further
examination.
Certain leading industries have not
only been carried to high degree OF
perfection, but, by the stimulating infu-
ence of "A great war, have been carried
beyond the requirements of home con-
sumption. We have the facilities 40,
making more iron, more paper, more
cotton cloth, more shoes, more sewing
machines, more moving machines, more
railway cars and locomotives than we can
use. We are exporting some of these
articles, but still our mills only work on
half time when they work at all.
Agriculture branch of industry
which we have been in the habit of re-
garding as illimitable-is seen, more and
more, to be like all the rest. Machinery
has so multiplied the powers of labor in
this field that only one man can get a
living in it, where six men used to work,
and could now work, if the machines had
lOb Dttii lHNtiibtu. VIC lhioO, Wioh viz
present force and facilities, wheat and
meat enough to feed all our people, with
handsome margin for expectation. This
field of production could not be greatly
crowded beyond its present condition
without Cutting the markets, and re-
ducing the price of the product below
the remunerating point. So, while many
more could raise the food they eat, and
could better do this than starve at other
employments, or with no employment at
all, agriculture, as hopeful and profit
able industry, is us truly limited by the
wants of the country as any other. The
old idea, that anybody and everybody
who fails elsewhere can do well on a farm,
must be given up.
With the field of agriculture fully oc-
cupied, with all the leading manufacture
ing industries overdone, what is the re-
sort left to our laboring populations
What is the resort left TO our capitalists?
There is but one. and that is the multi
plication of our industries. The foreign
peoples who have looked to America for
their best markets-who have almost
lived upon America-will be obliged to
turn their attention to other fields, and
tNtll III llltlll NlSDulC Will AIltlltbilS III
trade, aud do it at disadvantage; for
the late Exhibition has shown them, and
shown ourselves, that American ingenu-
ity untrammeled by old ideas and meth
DDS, finds better modes of manufacture
than those that have been followed for
centuries in the Old World. We formerly
imported all our watches; now we make
as good watches as anybody, and
make them by the use of ma
chinery that nobody else has dreamed
of before. The Italian sewing silk,
which formerly stood at the head of the
markets of the world, is now superseded
in quality and cheapness eff production
by the American article. There is really
nothing that we have touched in earnest
that we have not succeeded in accomplish
ing, and we are beginning upon silk fab
RIGS with the certainty of success. All
this has been done within few years,
and the time is not far off when we shall
make all our own silks-with China and
Japan at our bachelors to raise our
cocoons for us, and reel them-and build
all our own watches.
What has been done and is doing in
these branches of production is quite
practicable, and in every way necessary
to be done, in other fields. We can make
all our own pottery and decorate it, just
as well as to depend upon other coun-
tries for it. We can make all our own
cutlery, quite as well as they make it in
Sheffield. We can make our own wooden
cloths and carpets as well as they can be
made in France and Germany and En-
gland. There is no good reason why
the finer grades of leather may not be
produced here as well as in France.
Already, England is losing her prestige
in printing Our modes are surprising
hers.
There is nothing that we use which we
cannot make. Gloves we make already
in enormous quantities Artificial flow
ers, bronzes, every sort of ornament, are
as easily producible here as anywhere.
The flax industry has hardly been
touched here-an industry on which Ire
land and Saxony almost live at our ex-
pense There is no good reason why we
should import yard of linen. We have
landau almost illimitable acreage of it
that will raise good flax, and plenty of
men and women to grow and fabricate it,
We can not only make our own cordage,
but produce the raw material for it.
Out into these fields the capitalist must
reach or find no profitable employment
for his money. Into these fields labor
must go, or lie idle and descend into
pauperism. 1t is not matter of choice
with us; it is matter of necessity. OF
course it will take good many years to
accomplish the results we seek There
must be costly experiments; there must
be processes of education of head and
hand; there must he time for capital to
move itself; but the change must come,
and toward these fields the public atten-
ton should be Immediately directed.
Our only hope for steady and permanent
prosperity lies exactly here. We must
produce for ourselves, and thus employ
the nations idle capital and idle hands,
and the quicker the movement is made,
and the more efficiently it is prosecuted,
the earlier our old and much longed-for
prosperity will come back to us. The
subject is full of interest, and crowds the
coming century with changes and devel-
opmefits which the most hospitable mag
ination must fail to measure.