The record-union. [volume] (Sacramento, Calif.) 1891-1903, 1892-03-25

advantage for himself. lie makes it his
business to find market Tat is for the
benefit of the consumer, in the market
where he sells.
But these are not the methods of the
merchant class of San Francisco. They
are content to sell to the consumer re-
gardless of his market advantages and
opportunities, and apparently utterly
! careless whether he finds market or not.
Z Their aim has been-and of this there is
record to establish ito prevent any
possible business building in the sur
| rounding country for the benefit of the
producer, and to that end they have
ditions and commercial laws which erect
minor distributing centers to supply pro-
ducers more economically than distant
ones.
So we find that the San Francisco mer-
chants are not merchants in the true
sense; that they would not be recognized
as such in Melbourne, for instance, be-
cause they have not that comprehensive
grasp aud that broad horizon of view
which distinguishes merchant princes
from mere shopkeepers. They are, indeed,
merchants by title, but retailers in truth.
Originally the merchant was ship
owner, and he was the stimulator of pro-
duction; he was the promoter of the
country about him; he made it not slav-
ish by its needs to him, but independent
| him tributary power that never failed
him. But with the merchants of San
Francisco the chief aim would appear to
pick the bones Of the interior; to force
the consumer to buy in the metropolitan
market whether or not; to crush out any
and every enterprise that promises in
perity.
They have, for instance, left to the rail-
road transportation companies the whole
business of stimulating production, and
have even endeavored to retard that
work. We search the history of the times
in vain for single instance that tends to
prove that San Francisco has even so
much as practically concerned itself
about stimulation of production.
For instance, the industries connected
with the Soil of California have generated
the capital that has been reservoired in
the metropolis. Now irrigation will do
for every part of the State what it has
done for Fresno, where it raised the
population from 1880 to $4,000 in ten
years. 1t can do that on every piece of
land equally fertile and lying under like
| conditions, and there are fifty such places
in the State.
Yet when the irrigators of California,
under the Wright law-declared constitu-
tional by the Supreme Court of the United
States-went to San Francisco and asked
for money for their bonds, giving as good
mand, they found that they could get no
money from that city. She had none to
advance to stimulate production; she had
millions to loan upon her own town lots,
but not one cent to develop an empire of
production about her that would make
her early future gigantic compared with
the littleness of her present.
San Francisco, for reasons we cannot
now pause to consider, lost the trade of
Washington and Oregon when they had
less than 500, 600 of population. She could
place 100000 people inside of the next ten
years, producers and consumers, land pros
porous in all respects, within a radius of
one hundred miles, by the stimulation of
the effort to repeat the example of Fresno
with irrigation. But does San Francisco
manifest even the hope, save by the plati-
tudes of its press, for such an achieve
ment? Does she lift solitary finger to
enable it to be done? Does all the cap
italized vigor of that city expend so much
as dollars worth of effort to bring about
that success?
Any number of similar instances to
that named may be cited, but one at this
time is sufficient. San Francisco is an
absorbent; it's merchants fail to realize
that no great commercial vigor is posi-
BILE except the flow of its life current is
natural, free and generous; that natural
forces, stimulated and fostered. alone pro-
duce great commercial success; that cities
dependent upon others for the establish
ment of its lines of commerce and the
stimulation of production in their tribu-
tary areas cannot declare their indepen-
dence or assert their permanency, since
they are not the masters of their business.
SIMPLE COINAGE ILLUSTRATIONS.
r. L =