The Shoe That Could Save Seattle: Why We Must Stop Exporting Our Hides to San Francisco

A SHOE FACTORY WILL HELP SEATTLE.

FORTUNES UNDER OUR VERY FEET.

No community ever grew up to permanent wealth that ignored the power and greatness of the mechanical arts. The South owed her commercial downfall to an attempt to create a mere landed aristocracy of primary producers in raw staples. In their desire to protect the “peculiar institution,” they crowded out free labor and left themselves at the mercy of Northern manufacturers. As soon as their ports were closed by the war they were left almost entirely naked and saw that their neglect of manufactures had reduced them to beggary in spite of the greatest of natural wealth.

So it is with us. We have a fine climate, the greatest harbor in the world and an abundance of splendid timber; but we must not content ourselves with the mere export of crude staples. Labor is what makes new countries grow, and we need HOME MANUFACTURES.

That we may reap the profit upon the labor of domestic artisans. We are already making great inroads upon the furniture trade and fast driving imported articles of that line out of the market, by the splendid ash and maple sets that our home shops are turning out. Our local tailors turn out such nice suits to order, that no man of taste thinks of buying a ready-made suit. The cordouiers turn out boots worthy of Kelly, of San Francisco, or Brooks, of New York.

But still there are thousands of men who will never take the time to get measured for a pair of boots or a suit of clothes. They never think of anything till the very moment they go away and then they make a rush for a store to buy whatever a salesman sees fit to give them. For this reason, a BOOT AND SHOE FACTORY is today a prime want of our growing city.

Hardly a day passes over but good and competent workmen come in search of work and pass on to another town, while the loggers and miners pay their thousands of dollars per annum to San Francisco for boots, which might as well be made here and the money kept in the country. If we are compelled to sell our coal and lumber for silver, and then pay ten per cent premium on gold to pay San Francisco for her boots and shoes, we have nothing to expect but bankruptcy and destitution.

If on the contrary, we go to work as men should and keep in circulation here the neat little sum of THIRTY THOUSAND DOLLARS Per annum, we may eventually become rich. Certainly not less than that much money leaves here every year for boots and shoes, while we keep on slaughtering the fattest of beef and exporting the best hides that can be found on the coast, to Santa Cruz or Stockton, only to pay freight back on the leather, for which we have to pay gold bought at a premium of ten per cent.

Every practical tanner will tell you that he wants no hides from lean animals; the fatter the ox, the thicker the hide. Now it is well known that the butchers of Seattle get all their cattle from Yakima valley, where they are fattened on bunch grass; hence their hides are thick and will make dense leather. From what little we could glean from one or two retail butchers here, we are safe in saying that not less than TWO HUNDRED HIDES Per month are shipped here to San Francisco, which might as well be tanned here.

If a tannery were established here on a large scale, there would be at least twice that number of hides worked up in Seattle. Look at the lives slaughtered in Olympia and Port Townsend, and then say if the making of leather could not be made profitable. This heavy sole leather is what our large saw-mills use for machine belting on all their pulleys and drums, and why should it not be made here as well as elsewhere?

Again, the loggers need boots made especially for their rough and dangerous calling and it is a supposable case that workmen living here should be better conversant with their needs than those abroad. It is a defiance of every RULE OF POLITICAL ECONOMY That we should export raw staples, paying freight on them to San Francisco and then paying freight back here on the manufactured article.

We will never grow opulent as long as we do so, for our town would become depopulated whenever the timber is cut away and the coal mined out, unless we use the profits on that coal and timber to start manufactures and thus preserve the vitality of our city. Take the world over and you find the greatest opulence where there is the most skilled labor.