Sacramento daily record-union., 1890-09-13
OGDEN VERSUS SALT LAKE.

UGDEh VERSUS SALT LAKE.
For nearly two hundred years the aver
age American mind has been engaged in
specializing as to the prospective growth of
cities. Contemplation Of subjects like
these is very alluriug, because the fore
sight which would enable one to invest
judiciously in growing town is as certain
to lead on to fortune as would the posses
sion of the power of alchemy to transmute
base metals into gold. The public mind is
easily excited by the prospect of growth in
any city, and latterly, since money has
become abundant among the American
people, it is the easiest matter in the world
TO create boom. The cunning and the
INSCRIPTIONS have found this source of
great profit. The belief that Buffalo was
to be the great interior city of America
once took such hold upon the public i'm
agination that a city larger than London
was staked out around that town. There
are fields being plowed to-day which were
once suburban additions to Buffalo, and
the plow-share now and then strikes gran
lite street corners and turns up the gravel
of old macadamized thoroughfares
Throughout the entire West townsito
mon and as successful as lottery enter
prises Ogden is just now engaged in
advertising itself after the most monte
bank fashion. 1t is doing the patent med
icine act, but with what degree of success
we are not apprised. Investors shoul d
understand one thing to wit: the local ty
which has growth is about the las t to
advertise in half page and full page dver-
tisements in journals published tn ousand
miles remote from them. The very Act that
Ogden is advertising Its growt d and its
townsite additions in Chicag and San
Francisco is proof that a sv sindle is in
tended. There is plenty OF capital in
Utah, plenty of capital to be attracted to
Ogden by the existence of real attributes
of growth, without adve rtising. All the
capital that can find pr ,itable investment
at Ogden is already there. The frantic
effort at advertising j to attract investors
to Improbable inv estments in decidedly
outside land specu' lations.
Salt Lake is an d will necessarily remain
the metropolis # Utah-in fact the natu-
raj metropolis Of an extensive region en-
braeing portif ,ns of Idaho, Montana, Wyom-
ing, Weste' m Colorado, Eastern Nevada
ana Nortf .ern Arizona. 1t is now city
OF o2oV inhabitants, and one of the
wealth. est cities of its size in America.
All tn e mining activities which give en-
pioy ment to large proportion of the peo-
PIE of Utah, are in the vicinity OF Salt
l axe. To the south Sard it has support
ing population which can never be tribu-
tary to Ogden, embracing many times the
area and containing many times the popu-
lation of that which Ogden may claim as
the area of its distribution Ogden is a
very considerable little village of about
10000 inhabitants. Its present growth is
fully equal to the demand. Additional
population will come to it when there is
additional inducement in the way of legiti-
mate support but that inducement does
not at present exist; and the greatest mis-
fortune which could possibly come to it
would be 10 secure boom, which its spec
ulators now seem so desirous of inaugurat-
ing. Real investors avoid investments in
towns stranded by subsiding boom. The
subdivision of large areas of land lying
around town and their sale to simple
minded people, has always proven bar to
the growth of real values in any place.
The reason fer this is that a large number
of persons, who have been bitten, are at all
times ready to sell cut, and as soon as
there is the least movement in real estate
In such town, the real estate worked off
IN the boom time rushes into competition
and crushes the market at once. There
are many towns with promising localities.
whose growth has been retarded for half a
century by reason OF booms, Just such as
the enemies of Ogden are now attempting
10 create.