Grant County Herald

GRANT COUNTY HERALD.
LANCASTER, WIS.
Monday, March 6, 1854.

Jones in Wisconsin.

The substance of our article, under this head, for this week, must vary in character from any we have presented before. The preceding articles were mere preliminaries of the work laid out, and we now enter upon the main issue: What advantages has the mineral region over other portions of the Mississippi valley?

Those who are well acquainted with the elementaries,--supply and demand, commercial intercourse, fixed laws of trade, and whatever else an enlightened set of people study to comprehend, or industrious men of corresponding reason aim to take advantage of, will best appreciate our remarks. Among the advantages any people must possess to allow of their rapid growth in wealth; are, competition in every variety of shape with their neighbors in other States; good relative advantages over others; means by which the products of labor can be thrown into competition in the east and south, rather than into competition at home; great cash resources over and superior to the cash resources of other places, and the ability to maintain an annual cash balance in their favor, whatever may be the condition of the money market, and however pressing the times. To such as have made the like considerations their study, we address our remarks in full confidence that we will be understood.

NATURAL BOUNDARIES OF GRANT CO.
Grant is bounded on the west by the Mississippi, which provides a free water communication with the south and the great southern metropolis, New Orleans, and with the vast country four hundred miles northward; it is bordered north by the Wisconsin river, which extends into the Pineries and exhaustless lumber resources towards Lake Superior. The extent of river coast bordering Grant County on the west and north exceeds one hundred miles.

RAILROADS.
We think the Milwaukee and Mississippi Railroad will pass through Grant County on its way to Prairie du Chien, and be finished within twelve or eighteen months, but we are not so certain about it as to place this statement upon our table of facts. We think Potosi will be supplied, and one or two other places, by branches connecting them with the Central and Milwaukee and Mississippi, but of this we are not certain. The Illinois Central Railroad, approaching completion as rapidly as money, sinew, skill and energy, all together can devise and execute, is to pass near the south line and terminate at the southwest corner of Grant County. The Mineral Point Branch, to be connected with the Illinois Central, extends southward near the east line of Grant County. This road, like the Central is under way, and having the means, its early completion is as fixed as the decrees of destiny.

WATER POWER.
Grant County has within its boundaries, about two hundred miles of small rivers, every mile of which affords water enough for mills of the largest class. We have before stated that, from the swift current of our streams, their even supplies of water from springs that neither increase nor diminish their volumes of water in wet and dry weather, their banks approaching like the banks of canals, yet never overflowing and the earth along them being a firm clay to confine the water for dams,--this region is the best supplied with water power of any other in the western country. There are many streams besides, affording water plenty for saw mills and light machinery and a number of springs, each supplying enough water for a twenty or fifty horse power. Nearly all of these privileges lie unappropriated to their destined use. A large proportion of them are situated upon unentered lands --there being near 400,000 acres of unentered lands in the County, and some 500,000 acres entered. There are only about twenty water powers improved in the County.

MINERAL RESOURCES.
Our lead resources constitute a Bank of perpetual gold and silver dividends. Other regions are deficient in such an institution, but endeavor to supply its place by erecting Banks of discount and loan, with bits of paper as substitutes for our gold and silver. Our miners never will receive paper for their mineral, and the labor of a thousand years cannot exhaust our mines, so there is no danger of our bank breaking. It will go on perpetually to declare dividends, and every year's cash account will show that the dividends have improved. All other considerations of our commerce and commercial facilities, agricultural resources and manufacturing powers, seem to sink into shadowy nothingness when compared with this latter resource.

Let banks of discount everywhere tumble into ruin, and stock companies burst as soap bubbles; let the credit of every corporation for paper issue shake in the wind and reel and totter as a drunken man in a storm, and our bank of gold and silver dividends will flourish as tho' peace reigned without and good will among men. This is no delusion. The business man can see what resources we must have, when troubles come over the financial world, as they are bound to periodically.

Upon a moderate estimate our miners produce annually, and thrust into circulation one million of dollars. About 2,000 miners are engaged, and the average annual product of each is about $500. The price of lead has raised 20 per cent. during the year, and the number of miners has largely increased, but we are writing of averages. Perhaps the product of the year 1853 was a quarter of a million over the estimate, and the estimate of 1854 will be over any former year, but we prefer to adhere to the estimate of others, rather than venture one of our own.

With a soil of unsurpassed fertility, and unequalled durability; with over a western average of timber, and with the best springs to be found in the Union; with mineral resources ahead of the Lake Superior region, and connected by rivers and railroads with the East and South, we believe our section has more advantages than any other, even the most favored spot elsewhere in the Mississippi valley.