Are There Opportunities For 

 Manufactories in California. 



THE EDITORS. % 



OWER, transportation and raw material — these are the three 

 essentials to every manufacturing enterprise, and according as 

 they are cheap or abundant so the opportunities for manufac- 

 turers are determined. 



In California these essential conditions exist in a somewhat 

 unusual degree. With a coast line of almost twelve hundred 

 miles, facing the markets of the Orient, and affording transportation to the 

 ports of the world, the possibilities of foreign trade seem almost unlimited. 

 Taking in account the remarkable and varied resources of the State, its 

 manufacturing life has scarcely begun. Its vast forests have only been 

 commercially exploited to a very limited degree and it is said that in Hum- 

 boldt County alone less than one-tenth of the total lumber acreage has been 

 harvested in all the operations of the last fifty years. Throughout the 

 Sierras are vast forests of pine and fir. Lumber is only one of the many raw 

 materials which will be commercially exploited. There is an abundance of 

 other material which can be utilized without appreciably destroying its 

 quantity. 



The problem of fuel and power has been remarkably solved in Cali- 

 fornia by the discovery of vast fields of petroleum and by the generation of 

 electric power from the energy of mountain streams. The force of moun- 

 tain streams through electric transmission is now generally available where 

 illumination and power are required. 



Electric energy is divisible. The manufacturer can use as much or as 

 little of it as he desires and only pays for what he uses. Owing to the in- 

 crease in the electric power and the improved methods of long-distance 

 transmission, the census taken at the present time would probably show a 

 great increase in the number of small manufactories. 



In some places^ in California electric power has been furnished as cheap 

 as fifty dollars a year per horsepower in small quantities. It is purchased 

 often, for pumping plants at the rate of one cent and three-quarters to 

 a cent and a half per horse power per hour. A great amount of power is 

 sold to the dredging companies around Oroville at about eight dollars per 

 horsepower per month. With the development of electric energy the problem 

 of the manufacturer is solved. The small manufacturer in the little shop 

 can secure a horsepower to run his shop at a rate which is encouraging. 

 Here's a theoretical horse which works twenty-four hours in the day three 

 hundred and sixty-five days in the year and never eats, sleeps or requires 

 care, and has actually more energy than a real horse. Any other State 

 with less wealth than California would have been seriously impover- 

 ished through sending away so much money for goods which can be manu- 

 factured within its borders. Carloads of show cases are brought here every 

 year. The glass used is brought from Belgium and the wood used, mostly 

 oak, is brought in its finished state from Grand Rapids. In California there 

 is an abundance of glass sand which has been pronounced by experts to 

 compare favorably with the Belgium glass sand, and there is an abundance 

 of wood material which could be used in making showcases. Much of the 

 raw material of some of the articles used here is shipped to the East, manu- 

 factured and then returned to California, where it is used in its completed 

 form. The statement was recently made by a large woolen dealer that he 

 had to send all his wool to New York to be cleaned because there were not 

 facilities enough for him to get his wool cleaned here. Yet California manu- 

 factures some of the finest woolens and blankets in the world. A well- 

 known man in one of the smaller cities in this State sent to Chicago to 

 secure several pairs of the best blankets in the market for his daughter, who 

 was about to set up housekeeping. When the blankets came, he found upon 

 them a mark showing that they had been manufactured in his own town 

 and not three blocks away from where he lived. 



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