The Bennington evening banner. (Bennington, Vt.) 19??-1961, 1909-11-19
HELPING VERMONT GROW

though sometimes apparently greater
inducement is offered for loans out
side the state. And there is some
thing beside mere sentimental loyalty
to home interests in the proposition
There is decidedly practical side tC
it. Just as fast as the industrial
Vermont is developed, just so fast will
Vermont banks have increasing oppor
tunity to make dollar right here al
home where their loans can at all
times be placed with the assurance
of first hand knowledge of borrowers
and conditions and the additional ad
vantage of watching both through
every day of the period of the Loan
st. Adams Messenger.
The Free Press and Messenger have
herein struck the main issue in the
development of Vermont. 1t was not
alone the emigration of Vermonters
that made Vermont stationary for a
third of a century. 1t was just as
much, and perhaps more, the difficulty
in securing money for home business
in competition with the high rates of
interest offered in the west
In the great business depression
following Clevelands election in 1892,
ten or fifteen million dollars of Yer
mont investments in the west We're
wiped out. This statement looks on
its face to be wild exaggeration but
it is literally true or, if it errs in any
respect, the estimate is too small. In
one county alone the loss was almost
three millions. The extent to which
Vermont money faded away into the
west in 1898, 1894 and 1895 has never
been fully told and probably never
will be.
Now this money was not wasted. 1t
was a part of that tremendous sum
which started the west on it's great
development, a development that has
been and is the wonder of the world
and is today sending the west ahead
so much faster than the east. The
money is still there and working
every day. 1t has merely been lost
to Vermont and as a result Vermont
development has Jagged
The provincial egotism and greed of
some of the past generation of Yer
monters not only failed to profit them
anything but # has left the present
generation lap behind VIII the
present generation follow in the foot
steps of the past? That is the ques-
ton Of the day
The lesson of '93 and "a was thor
oughly learned and for the past fifteen
years it has been possible to borrow
Vermont money for Vermont bust
ness The result has been
steady and healthy growth and an i'm
petus toward a still more prosperous
future. but misfortunes are soon for
gotten and sons often refuse to profit
from the errors of their fathers.
Investments at home rarely pay as
high rates of interest as are promised
by some distant scheme but results
in the long run tell the story. Not
to make any invidious comparisons,
but as a concrete illustration of actual
business methods, look at the career
of the late Luther r. Graves of Ben
nington. In his later life his invest
ments were many and varied but in
the more active years of his business
success his favorite investment was
to pick out honest, progressive, indus
trious young men and help them build
up business right here in New Eng
land where he could keep track of
conditions and guard against difficult
ties that could not be foreseen were
they thousand miles away. Com
pare results in the case of Mr.. Graves
with those of other men of his gener-
alton who bought heavily of western
securities attracted by ten per cent
rate of interest.
III tHiS same connection are our
railroads doing all they might do, or
are they following an old rut? In the
course of rather limited western and
southern trips we have noted that
even some of the smaller and poorer
railroads there maintain departments
of local development to build up fu-
ture business. These western and
southern roads work all the time to
bring farmers and home owners to
settle along their line They seek to
locate business enterprises, no matter
how small, knowing that big business
usually starts small
We don't hear of our Vermont rail-
roads undertaking anything of the
sort. They strain every effort for
through traffic and are glad to get
what they can locally but they do
mighty little in building for the flu
tUYe. One bright man with a steno-
grapher for assistant attached to a
road lilo tho Pt1tIand M Noutro1 w.