Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 April 1918 — DEAD TOWN VERT SELDOM RECOVERS [ARTICLE]

DEAD TOWN VERT SELDOM RECOVERS

Community That Is Not Prosperous Cannot Attract New Residents. IS LIKE BIS 08RF0RATI0N People:. Are Stockholders and When They Spend “Their Money Away | From Home They Deplete Its Capital. (Copyright.) There 4s'nothing deader than a dead town. Try as hard as It may to conceal,the facts, the truth is written all over It so that he who runs may read. No camouflage of bluff and bluster can conceal the true situation from anyone who comes within the limits of the community. A dead town is dead and that’s all there is to it The worst of it is that once a town dies it stays dead. There have been exceptional cases in Which dead towns have been revived, have taken on new life and prospered, but these are merer ly the exceptions that prove the rulet The fact that a town can seldom “come back’’ is easily explained. The growing and prosperous town today Is the one that can attract new residents and new capital. It is one that can offer, attractive inducements for the location of new industries. The dead town offers no attraction to outside capital. A man looking- for a place to launch a hew business or a new location for an old industry, is nnt going to pick out a dead town. He' is going to select a town in which money is plentiful, a town whose business men are progressive and whose residents, as a whole, are prosperous and contented. There are too many live and thriving towns in the world for a man to risk his future in one that is dead. This is the reason that a town, once dead, almost always remains dead.

Town Like Corporation. There Is Just one thing, ordinarily, that kills a town in the first place and that is a lack of money. A town is just like a corporation and the money possessed by its inhabitants Is its cap-, ital. If this capital is 'depleted the town will fail just as the corporation, whose capital is depleted through poor management or other causes, fails. And just as the corporation which has once failed can seldom retrieve its lost fortunes, the town which has failed cannot often “come back.” The ca'ifttal of a, community is pleted when its money is spent away from home in a way that brings .no return benefit to- the community. It takes no great amount of thought to be able to realize that the town, like the individual, cannot last long if it Is paying ont more money than It takes in. That does not mean that a prosperous town, is one In which the people do not spend any money. On the contrary, a prosperous town is 'one in which the people do spend money but It is one in which they spend the money at home. As long as the money is spent at home, the town gains by having it kept in circulation, but when it is spent away from home, either by being sent to the mail order houses or by shopping trips to other citiqp, the town’s .capital is Impaired to that extent and if enough money is spent away from home in that way, the town collapses and virtually goes Into bankruptcy just as does the corporation which dissipates its capital.

The people of a community are apt to overlook the fact that they are stockholders in their town and that their fortunes are bound up with those of the , community as a whole. They do nbt realize that if their town fails they will fail With it. They—or many of them at lea^fc—send their money, .away to the mail order "houses in the great cities, without realising that they are impairing the capital of their own corporation a>nd that if enough of them pursue that course they will force their corporation into certain bankruptcy. Merchants Not Only Ones Hurt. - Many customers of mqll order h'ouses say that they are under no obligation to trade with their home merchants and this may te true. They overlook that fact that the business men of a' town do much for their corn; munity and are entitled, in return for what , they do, to the support of the people in the community, but leaving this out of consideration, they overlook the fact that they are bringing about their own downfall when they drain their town of its money—its capital. The home merchant will not be the only 'one that will be hurt when the town “goes broke.” The merchant pan reduce his stock and cut down his expenses and get along some way or he can sell out and move to some ether town which has not been so blind to its own welfare. It Is the great body of the people of the community including all those who have sent their money away to other cities instead of speeding it at home, that suffers most when rthe hard Hme».coine. The time for all the people to pull together for a*live town is while the town is still live and not after it is dead, for when a town dies it la a long time dead —if hot forever.