The Republican journal. [volume] (Belfast, Me.) 1829-current, 1906-12-27

THE COAL POCKETS AT
past ten years, it has become absolute
ly necessary that the market for the
great staple crop of the county should
be broadened. New England answered
the purpose of market ten years ago,
but Aroostook of today, raising a pota.
to crop exceeding $4,000, 900 bushels,
has hopelessly overlapped this limited
| demand and must get access to broad
er markets. Such market exists in
the Middle and Southern States, but to
reach it there must be added to ample
transportation facilities, business or
ganization, strong in capital, ability
and experience. During the past few
years this has been rapidly developed,
and the handling and marketing OF
Aroostook's potato crop is engaging
capital and business ability in amount
and breadth to meet in full the require
ments.
In every business center of the county
| large and strong concerns have grown
up representing the commercial end OF
the industry, but no single town in the
county has perhaps been so fortunate
as regards the acquisition of capital and
new blood in this special business, as
has Pressure Isle. Within the past three
wears two concerns engaged in the po-
tato shipping business and its natural
adjunct that of handling fertilizer, have
chosen Presque Isle as their headquar-
tiers, whose combined capitalization now
amounts to half a million dollars. Both
| these concerns, the one Carter, Corey
| Company, and the other r. L. Prentlss
Company, have developed large bust
ness very rapidly, and both are entitled
to much credit for the intelligent enter
prise with which their business is con-
/ Quoted. These two concerns, the extent
of their operations, and their manner OF
carrying them on furnish striking
object lesson of the new Aroostook-
the greater and broader Aroostook-
made possible by the railroad as it is
/ today. The example of business mag
nitude furnished by such concerns as
these is brought so suddenly before the
attention that clearer realization of
our county's great progress is possible
| through them than is afforded by any
of the old and familiar features and OBJ
! jects of business activity. Things have
been rising steadily to a higher level
wear after year. The county in which
we live has been growing steadily in all
notwithstanding bigger and bigger,
but the growth has been. so gradual, so
even all over, that we have not realized
it, We have not stopped to take ac
count of stock, nor had any means of
measuring the forward strides taken,
the actual distance covered in getting
ahead being made up of so many things
scattered so far apart-the sum of gains
in different ways made by sections and
communities widely separated. But
big business suddenly built up in con-
crete shape before our eyes, which IS
laid out in lines following in true pro-
portion the dimensions of the county
itself industrially, is true measuring
! stick, and what surprises us about 1t is,
I not the big proportions of the individual
i business we apply as yard stick, but
the all at once realized. idea of the true
dimensions of the county whose agrl-
cultural industry and whose vast pro
ductivenesS makes such a business pos
sibIe.
| Big things like these do not come in
to any business, or industrial field with
out provoking some criticism and pro-
| test, generally from those whose self
interest is involved in raising obJec-
! ton. The business organizations we
refer to for handling Aroostook's po-
! tato business adequately and as great
industry should and must be handled
! have been objected to as monopollstlc
in tendency In reality they are the
salvation of Aroostook, as section of
already immense and constantly grow
ing productiveness. If Il big and richly
fertile section is to make profitable up
to the maximum, it must have markets
to absorb its psoducts, and it can not
have and keep such markets without
some business medium for laying hold
of them. 1t must have the most etfec-
tive possible agencies for widening it's
market reach. If it raises potatoes it
must have as wide a territory to furn-
ish as can be secured-as many people
as possible enlisted to depend upon its
commodity to supply their needs, and
what brings this about in these days Of
sharp and eager industrial competition
is experience, push, ability and capital
of the highest and best type, organized
in the most effective way possible.
This is what such large concerns as
we refer to mean to Aroostook, whose
methods we will refer to later on, and
whose details of operation we will de-
scribe somewhat more particularly.