GENERAL REPORT. 
57 
with zinc manufactures for an indefinite period. Yet only one 
establishment, and that owned and managed exclusively by 
Eastern capitalists, has yet found a place in the whole mineral 
region. 
'We have almost exhaustless supplies of timber of nearly 
every variety essential to the wooden manufactures commonly 
used in this country, much of it located on, or within easy and 
economical shipping distance from, the very best water-powers 
on the globe. But as yet, a few cabinet shops, here and there, 
of moderate capacity all combined, a number of shingle, sash, 
door and blind factories, with as many more engaged in the 
manufactory of wooden buckets, tubs, kitts, wagon work, 
barrel staves, &c., are doing all that is done to utilize that 
power and to help make Wisconsin what she ought to be and 
is surely destined to become, the great workshop of the West. 
Our Agriculture is already producing large quantities of 
wool and flax for textile fabrics, hides, tallow, &c., and with 
a good home demand, would produce still larger supplies of 
these and other products ; but, as yet, only a small proportion 
of these raw materials are worked up at home. The great 
bulk go to the Eastern States, where they are manufactured, 
aud then returned and sold to us at a price covering cost of 
Jaw material, profits of buyers, transportation East, profits on 
the manufacture, transportation back again, and the further 
profits of the one, two, or three merchants through whose 
hands they finally reach the consumer. 
Surely this is a miserable policy, as compared with the more 
rational one of building up manufacturing centers on our own 
soil; which, while furnishing work to tens of thousands of 
mechanics and ordinary laborers, with good pay and still large 
profits to the manufacturer, would at the same time furnish 
our farmers with a home market for every product of agricul¬ 
ture at better rates, and, in turn, supply them with manufactur¬ 
ed articles, of almost every sort, at prices much reduced—a 
policy which would bring additional prosperity and happiness 
