The Lee County journal. (Leesburg, Ga.) 1904-19??, 1909-08-06
Prophetic Eye in Business.
Tomorrow Departments" Of the Great Industries
Railroads Securing Fuel Half Century Ahead
Tanners Buy Up Forests Brick Makers Get Clay
Banks--Training For Work Of the Future ..........

quired property at Seattle worth $780,
900, 900, at Tacoma 100000, at
Duluth, at Butte, at Spokane $14,-
100000 more. The stated policy Of
the Hartman roads is to have
enough future lands available so that
for each additional car it can put into
immediate use 362 feet Of yard track
age and sidings.
Against the time when coal lands
will be exhausted number of East
ern railroads are acquiring water
power rights through subsidiary cor
porations. The steam railroads have
no present use for this power, and
the money so invested must lie idle
perhaps for many years; but they
must be prepared for the future.
Some time-no one can predict the
date with assurance-the electric
locomotive will upset our traditions.
Then to-day's millions will return
dividends.
The smallest industry can apply
this same principle. The big indus
tries are cited only because they are
conspicuous instances the Western
Electric Company at its new Haw-
thorne plant has enough idle land to
provide for manifold expansion; the
mercantile house of Sears, Roebuck
& Co. has forty acres Of empty
prairie land around its plant, ready
for to-morrow's building.
The United States Steel Corpora
tion owns land at Gary and Bufing-
ton, also seven miles of lake front,
with riparian rights which will per-
nit of the making of as much land
out in the lake as the company will
ever require. The Corn Products
Company has acquired whole town
ship and put its factory in the middle
of it. The free land of the Allis-
Shalmers Company will allow the du-
plication of its West Allis plant in
straight line six times over.
Retail stores are looking to the
future, particularly in congested dis
tricts, by providing foundations for
structures erected capable of sup
porting additional stories as the vol
ume of business demands.
Down to the minutest detail this
lookout for tomorrow may be car
ried. A company making various
lines of apparatus is overhauling its
catalogue system in such way that
it,will be possible to group kindred
styles Of apparatus under simple num-
bers.
The plan has been to number styles
consecutivefy as they were originated.
Now each type is to have a thousand
numbers style A will be called 1000,
style B 1000 and so on. Improve
ments in type A will be numbered
1901, 1902 and so on. Adding to this
the use of the loose leaf in the cata-
logue, the futures orderly expansion
so far as concerns this one little detail
is provided for.
Then there is another kind of to-
morrow policy-the progressive to-
morrow departments, which embrace
those that are studying future de-
mands, altered customs, future mar
kets, future possibilities in the way
of inventions and devices. Farm i'm
plement makers are investing great
sums in experiments so that the bust
ness of their sons may be abreast of
demand and of progress.
A large machine making plant
spent a million dollars in one year
in this experimental work An auto
mobile factory has devoted five years
to experiments on an automobile de-
signed for a particular and local pur-
pose.
One appliance manufacturer ac-
tually has in his vaults patents, de-