The Valley Virginian. [volume] (Staunton, Va.) 1865-1895, 1882-08-24
What Virginia Needs.

The most casual observer passing through
Virginia cannot fail to see that Prov fence
has blessed us with a rich inheritance. IA the
rural districts plenty teens on every hand
Farmers are beginning to appreciate the wis
dom of small farms, well cultivated, and diver
siied crops, rather than ancestral homesteads
covered with broomsedge and briars. Industry
characterizes our people as class and the ex-
ception is to find an idler.
With all the fortuitous surroundings OF
splendid climate productive soil and rich min
eral resources, our people find, though their
crops have been abundant and they have not
idled away the hours in dreams, that they
are very little better off at the end of the year
than at the beginning. 1t is very natural,
therefore that they should pause to inquire
why this is 80. Why are we at a stand still,
financially, while the men of the East and the
West and even the South are building up
massive fortunes so that when old age comes
they may enjoy the evening of life free from
care and anxiety about the welfare of those
who are to be left behind
uC uubWCA 10 Nv OuCC pam ohu
BILE: We need manufactures. We can no more
hope to compete with the immense crops of
California and the West than a road wagon
can keep pace with a locomotive Steam and
electricity have annihilated distance so that
the cereals of the West can be landed at our
doors almost in forty eight hours. Start pa
per mills, how ever, and we have a home mar
ket for all the straw, rags and bark that can
be supplied at good prices; or wagon facto-
ries, and all of our timber becomes at once re-
munerative or wooden factories and our wool
growers can unload their wool at home with
out middlemen or furnaces or tOundries and
there will be thousands of mouths to be filled
calling for enlarged truck gardens and diaries
as well as larger crops of wheat and corn.
Start one of these enterprises and others will
spring up all around. just as money begets
money, so one manufactory Gegets another
and every class OF the community Is benefited
the farmer, the mechanic, the trucker, and
the dairyman. The..whole country will he filed
with new life and new hopes, all set in motion
by the great heart of manufactures.
Travel through the North and West and it
looks as though every available place were
occupied by industrial enterprises just as it is
in the mercantile business with us. The red
hot tongues of furnaces are to be seen on every
hand. Come South and their roar is heard at
rare intervals, the merry click of the hammer
is lost in the distance and instead of the fur
mace, the factory and the loom, we see the
people ploughing and sowing and reaping
and merchandising just as they have been do
ing pretty much all their lives.
It cannot be that this state OF things can
continue much longer. The vast volume OF
money that is now lying idle in the. banks
must find profitable employment. These great
possibilities Of wealth must and will be made
realities. This unbroken ground will soon be
turned up and just as the original soil of the
praires brings forth fruit for the early settler,
some thirty fold, some sixty and some an
hundred, so does this State offer rich returns
for men who have the sagacity anc the deter
mination to seize this golden opportunity.
Let practical man examine for himself and
II matters not what business he proposes to
follow he will find here in the Valley of Viz
ginia and especially in Staunton advantages
that he cannot afford to neglect. Who will
be the fret to reap this harvests