THE CONQUEST OF ARID AMERICA 



March, 1869, at the end of September, 1895, when our 

 incorporation ran out, had accumulated to $2,014.30, 

 and in addition to this we have paid upon this $1,000 in 

 cash dividends the sum of $4,218.05. 



" "We have turned out in our manufacturing depart- 

 ments boots and shoes to the value of $2,053,294.43, and 

 in our duck clothing and shirt factory upwards of 

 $80,000 worth. Last year (1895) it was an off-year with 

 our manufacturing departments, but we turned out 

 75,400 pairs of boots and shoes, and 15,648 dozen over- 

 alls, shirts, etc." 



This is the history of Utah's largest co-operative un- 

 dertaking. It is a history which no friend of co-operative 

 effort will blush to read, for it proves that a great busi- 

 ness can be as successfully administered in the interest 

 of the many as in the interest of a few. The latest 

 and largest of the Mormon industrial enterprises is the 

 beet - sugar factory, owned by seven hundred stock- 

 holders, which in 1895 produced considerably more than 

 700,000,000 pounds of sugar and paid a cash dividend 

 of ten per cent. Its later dividends are much larger. 

 It also furnished a profitable market for the products of 

 many irrigated fields. 



While the most satisfactory results of co-operative en- 

 terprise have been obtained in the last two decades, much 

 was achieved in the early day. As early as 1850, when 

 Salt Lake Valley had been settled less than three years, 

 the industrial products amounted to only a little less 

 than three hundred thousand dollars. Ten years later 

 they had mounted nearly to the million mark, and in 

 1870 they considerably exceeded two and a quarter mill- 

 ions. In 1895 the total was close to six millions. The 



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