River Falls Journal

Mills, Factories, &c., at River Falls.

MR. EDITOR: I have often thought (especially when reminded by our local papers) what a nice and profitable thing it would be for River Falls to utilize its two or three hundred horse-power of waters, now unused, and the surplus funds of its citizens, in manufactories. Years ago it was said that there was then seventy-five thousand dollars of money belonging to your citizens not in use about the place, and not permanently invested, but deposited in the banks of neighboring cities, loaned out here and there for short periods, or locked up waiting for an opportunity. This sum must have been increasing, and it and the wonderfully cheap and durable power of the Kinnickinnic should put their forces together and build up the town as well as the owners.

There is an abundance of suitable timber near by, now being transported through your village and away to the towns and cities of the enterprising Minnesotian, some of it returning in the shape of machines and implements. Why not avoid this double transportation and make and sell all the various forms of woodenware and goods at home, and give employment to the many who now have no satisfactory or steady work, but beat about from one thing to another procuring a living as best they can?

The lands of these valleys can also give you raw material without limit for other besides wood work—flax and hemp and wool for cloths and fabrics, flax seed for oil and oil-cake, and potatoes and corn for starch or glucose.

Mr. Powell deserves the thanks of the people for his syrup factory, Mr. Oakley's extensive lime works declare the triumph of energy. Messrs. Rollin and Coggshall are making a limited number of cockle mills.

Who will start the paper mill, the oil mill, the cotton and the woolen mills, the starch and canning factories, or something in the line of woodenware?

Look at Stillwater, turning out cars and threshers, a half dozen a day. Look at Minneapolis, with her busy works of wood and iron, her cotton and woolen mills, and her wonderful flouring mills, able to make thirty thousand barrels of flour a day.

All our principal cities revert to their manufactories as a large source of their wealth. Some of them, supposed to be merely commercial emporiums, manufacture more goods annually in value than the assessed value of all other property.

S.

J. N. McMILLAN.