Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1886-09-20
Home Markets.

day, AT the vermont State 1alr, spoke at
length of the importance of home markets
for the products of agricultural and manu-
featured goods. We quote as follows:
Undoubtedly foreign markets are extremely
desirable for the sale Of the surplus produc
tons Of everything that cannot, tn the ordi-
nary course of things, be consumed at home !;
but for country situated IS ours is, they
cannot be relied upon with any safety as the
principal avenues Of reaching paying con-
sumers of our productions.
1t may be considered a maxim in the econ
omics of industry and production that just in
proportion to the number of consumers or
customers will ready sales at just and
remunerative prices be obtained; and so if
there be only a few and distant customers the
general certainty of a fair return tor the in
vestm nts of property skill and la 'or becomes
an uncertainty controlled by thousand cir
cumstances over which the producers and the
laborers in production have no control and
little Influence.
These evident, and indeed, almost self
evident, considerations point, as you can
readily see, to the one conclusion-one that
is not, and | hope and believe will not be,
thought political in any party sense-that the
policy of American legislation and the efforts
of American lawmakers, who are really the
people, ought to be directed to the utmost
development of every variety of American
production, and so to the improvement of the
American laborer and the American employ er
OF every kind, by giving that labor full en-
ployment and adequate reward. and to the
employed ready and steady markets. This
done, while it will be a source of gain and
profit to every material interest of the land
owner and the capitalist there will be also a
Ia nd 1yop IF
tons of society which are now so often the
victims of discomfort and suffering. ard
which 10 often, in unwise and misguided eff
forts to redress grievances, make progress
backward, and find themselves at the end of
q struggle with those who employ labor in q
worse condition than before.
The constantly employed and well-paid Ia
borer will become himself a man of accu-
mulating capitalize force of labor trans
posed into things. He will become a land
holder his wife and children-of the 6rst of
whom he ought to have one, and of the
ond many-will abide in his own
house. He will see that the liberty of the
laborinR man is not only the liberty to
'strike," as the phrase is, but that it is equal
liberty not to strike If he does not wish to,
and the liberty to work on in peace and safe
ty if he thinks it for his interest 80 to do,
while others may choose, as they have the
perfect right to do, not to work for the terms
proposed. He will learn that violence against
the administration of law, or unlawful coer
cion of any kind, exerted toward other work
ing men, or toward employers, are crimes OF
the grsvest character against all labor and the
welfare of labering men, upon whom the con
sequences of such things always finally
fall more heavily than On any other classes
| of society, inst as the heaviest Of the evils OF
extensive business failures generally fall
most largely upon the great body of industrial
workers.
The stopped mandatory brings want and
distress to a hundred families of the opera
tives to one of the employers. The broken
savings bank creates misery in thousand
| families of the poor, while it embarrssses the
families of its large creditors little, il at all.
The sudden depreciation of money showers
ruin upon the laboring man and The man
of small wealth, while in most cases
the wealthy and powerful manage to
lose little, if they do not really profit
| by the general disaster All these things be
ing understood, property and labor should
find their true and permanent interests to be
indissoluble, and that he, to whatever elias,
he NAV belong, who promotes strife between
| them is the enemy of both.
| That is, in the business sense, I repeat
the most perfect society in which capital and
labor cooperate on equal terms in produc.
ton, and in which the sources of the supply
for both production and consumption are
near at hand. You will say that this mean,
for us Americans the living to ourselves and
| for ourselves, by the development of home
resources, the employment of home labor snG
the consumption of home made products. 81
| il does. and so | think 1t ought to be, for
think that a nation, like family. owes it.
| first, though by no means its only duty tC
/ itself, and that in this lies the key of golG
that unlocks not only the physical treasure,
of the world, but opens to us and make,
possible, and INDEED certain. all those higher
benefits that come from the school, the col
! lege and the church, and which tend not only
! to promote more and more the personal com
fort and happiness of the people. but to make
the whole body of the community more anC
more homogeneous.
A number of Saratoga cottagers have hat
their houses fitted up with steam-heatin,
apparatus. with a view to wintering there anC
engaging in the healthful and invigoratin,
sport of tobogganing, snow-shoeing, etc.
which will be carried on there to a great ex
tent.
Lieutenant Hem of the Galatea is tn
| descendant of an old Irish family. Tw,
centuries ago the name was spelled Hone.