212 APPENDIX. 



We may add that, to complete their arrangements for car- 

 rying on this business to the fullest extent of the possible de- 

 mand for traps, the Community have built recently a new 

 manufacturing establishment on a water-power about a mile 

 from their former works, which will enable them to more than 

 duplicate their production. A view of the new buildings is 

 given at the beginning of this chapter. 



With the progress of improvement in their process of man- 

 ufacture, the cost and price of traps have correspondingly di- 

 minished, so that now the western pioneer or farmer's boy 

 can equip himself with traps of far better quality than the 

 weak and clumsy articles in former use, and at much less 

 price. The influence of these little utensils, now so widely 

 used, on the progress of settlement, civilization and comfort, 

 will occur to every observer. The first invaders of the wil- 

 derness must have other resources for immediate support than 

 are offered by the cultivation of the soil. These are present 

 in the valuable peltries of fur-bearing animals which are the 

 occupants of the soil in advance of man. Hence the trap for 

 securing them, going before the axe and the plow, forms the 

 prow with which iron-clad civilization is pushing back bar- 

 baric solitude ; causing the bear and beaver to give place to 

 the wheat-field, the library, and the piano. Wisconsin might, 

 not inappropriately, adopt the steel-trap into her coat-of-arms ; 

 and those other rising empires of the West Kansas, Colorado, 

 Nevada, and golden Idaho have been in their germ and in- 

 fancy suckled, not like juvenile Rome by a wolf, but by what 

 future story will call the noted wolf-catcher of their times, 

 the Oneida Community " Newhouse Trap." 



