Belding banner. (Belding, Mich.) 1889-1918, 1906-11-15
DON'T WANT
THEM TO GO
Baliou Mig. Company too Good
Proposition to Lose.
This Was the Sense of the Speakers at
the Citizens Meeting Monday
Night-Committee Appointed.

Quite a number Of our influential cti-
zens and buslnesss men gathered at the
opera house last Monday night in re-
sponse to a call issued by the Business
Mems Association to devise means where
by the large and constantly growing in
dustry might be retained in this city and
kept from going to the capitol city where
such favorable inducements have been
held out that Mr.. Ballou had practically
made up his mind to accept their offer.
M E Peck. president of the Business
Mems Association, called the meeting to
order and proceeded to call Mr.. {. B..
Lapham to the chair to preside over the
meeting. The chairman spoke in gen.
era way of the calling of the meeting and
the causes which led up to the same and
said that he thought that in order to get
the matter fairly before the meeting few
remarks from Mr. Ballou might show
about what inducements, if any, would be
necessary to keep the company in this
city.
Mr.. Balou said that the calling Of the
meeting was somewhat Of a surprise to
him, but that there was grounds for the
calling Of the same. The company which
had taken on the Demorest Mixer ma
chimes had been as yet in the experimental
stages with the machines. They had
found it necessary to take some OF the
machines back after shipping them but
that improvements had been made IN
many parts of the machine that had
proven defective at the first and that now
the machine was in fairly good operating
condition. three thousand dollars has al
ready been expended in advertising 1t anc
on November ! st the sales from the ma
chimes up to that time had more than paid
the outgo. Orders for spring delivery
we're already pouring in and the need OF
more room was already apparent TO them
for the successful handling of the business.
A gentleman from Saginaw had first
broached the idea of change of location
to him and the city of Saginaw had al
ready made him good offer. When the
little article appeared in the paper con-
cerning the Saginaw offer, Mr.. Chilson Of
the Lansing Business Mems association,
had called him by telephone and had also
come here to lcok the business up. He
had visited Lansing upon invitation OF the
business men there and had already been
rendered a fine factory building amply
equipped for the necessary room. He had
never said that he wanted anything from
the city, but he thought it should be worth
as much to Belding to have 1t stay here as
it was to secure the Fargo shoe factory,
$4,000.
M. E. Peck was next called on and said
that he had faith in Belding, we are here
and have some very fine factories and he
thought we could not well afford to lose
any of them. The pushing cities of the
state are constantly on the lookout foi
some new industry and Belding must dc
the same or become a back number
among her sister cities. This is busi-
ness proposition. The cement mixer is 4
labor saving machine and the time of thai
class of goods is today and he believed
that there was bright future in store
for the machine and the demand woulc