The Wheeling daily intelligencer. [volume] (Wheeling, W. Va.) 1865-1903, 1883-01-23
A Dollar EARNED and spent at Home.

A DoIfar Earned and hpent NJ Home.
In the fiscal year ending June 80, 1852,
iron and steel were imported into this
country to the value OF s67,076,S97. About
one.fourth OF the total value was represent
I'D by tinplates, the manufacture OF which,
by reason Of insufficient protection, has
never got a firm ioothold in this country.
The other considerable items in the list
are pig iron, s9,2lS, $50, steel rails; s7,l4'.
o49; firearms, hardware, machinery and
cutlery, 50, lS3, 1876; steel blooms, ,922 ,OSl;
steel in various forms, mainly wire rods,
S5,744,5l2.
The Government statistics do not give
the weight Of every article OF import, but
as nearly as can be asCertained the total
weight vas ,4SG,47S gross tons. Reducing
the iron and steel importations to pig iron
we have 100000 gross tons OF pig iron,
about two.thirds Of the pig iron produc'
ton Of this country for the year. Since
two tons Of coal and two OF iron are re-
quired to make ton OF pig iron S'ooo,Wo
tons OF each from our American mines
would have been used to produce the pig
iron. If It had been made at home.
1t is estimated by the American Iron and
Steel Association that labor earns from
first to last about Sl2 on every ton oil pig
iron produced in the United States, and
$40 will represent the same item in ton
OF bar iron, finer and more advanced
manufactures in proportion. Therefore the
account for the years iron and steel pur-
chases from abroad stands thus: Value OF
importations, round numbers, S6s,0OoOOO;
amount which would have been received
by American workingmen il these pur.
ebases had been OF home manufacture, $780,
0OOO0O-money enough to keep $4,000
men at work for three hundred working
days at g per day.
Let us give practical shape to this sugges-
ton and see how it looks. Ninety.three
thousand men would make city three
times as large US Wheeling. But 80 largea
number Of workingmen implies agreat adj
dition 10 the population. Each worker
represents five people dependent upon his
labor, 90 that on basis Of $4,000 working
men we have in our vicinity a population
Of 10000. Still this is not all. These peo'
pie will require and attract storekeepers,
mechanics and laborers OF all sorts, physl'
clans, lawyers, school teachers, preachers,
iournalists-men and women workers to
contribute to their comfort and their pleas
ure. By this time we have q population
more than twice as large as the great
English manufacturing city OF Birming.
ham, and quite as large as the great
American manufacturing city OF Philadel'
phia-nearly twice the SIZE OF Chicago.
These people must be fed they must DO
clothed with cotton and wooden stutis and
shoes Of cloth and leather. Here is where
the farmer comes ina new and great
market for him created by turn OF the
tide, which keeps at home S56,0OQpOOo oil
manufacturing business TO be added 10 lhe
$500, 100000 Of last years manufactured
products The agricultural product for
the came period is valued at nine hundred
millions Of dollars by the Commissioner OF
Agriculture, and seven hundred and fifty
millions by others--either sum is worth
adding to. II we imagine our new city
planted in great agricultural region, as
Chicago was,we may imagine the increased
value it will give to the lands Whereabouts,
as Chicago did-a never-failing home mar
ket for the fruit OF the farmers labor and
capital.
Fancy cannot follow these few facts
through their multiiorm relations to man
as producing power, nor Imagination
keep trace Of the expansive force OF dol
lar earned and spent at home. The pro-
erosion mounts so high and spreads so
far that the mind could not grasp, II it could
define, the limit. A dollar sent abroad
fetches so much home, and for US there is
,ha and nf that dollar