Editor’s Table: Home Industry

Editor's Table.

Home Industry

Have you looked about to see how many industries there are in our towns and cities? If not, there is an agreeable surprise for you, if you will investigate. Aside from the great sugar plants, which produce annually many millions; the splendid canning institutions, which preserve train loads of fruits and vegetables for home con- sumption and export; the millions that accrue annually from the great and only partially developed mining operations of our state, and the immense productions of the modern farms and gardens, it is really a big surprise to learn what large sums of money are invested and the thousands of workers interested in the sev- eral hundred other remunerative home industries in operation throughout the land. But this surprise is perhaps not so great as the fact that few of the general public appear to care whether or not the home goods are purchased and used in our midst. — They often prefer imported goods not so good and just as costly. The commercial clubs have lately awakened to the need of "boosting" for home industries and productions, and have even asked for a hearing of their representatives in the meetinghouses of the people, deeming the gospel of home industry and temporal salvation, not unfit to be taught in the temples of spiritual wor- ship. And they are very properly given a hearing, too. At the last general conference of the Church, President Joseph F. Smith sounded the key note to the situation, in addition to calling forceful attention to the value of teaching our children

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to become expert industrial workers. ^Manly scientific industrial work, manual trades and farming, are often tabooed for fancy, feminine occupations, and the professions — a condition that the coming captains of home industry and the trades will soon prove to be fallacious. What President Smith said on this subject is to the point and veiy appropriate just now: "If any people in the world should believe in the propriety and necessity of home industry, it is the Latter-day Saints. On the back of that, if there is a people anywhere in the intermountain region, or anywhere else, who have failed more completely in

maintaining and supporting some kinds of home industry, than we have, I do not know them. However much we may believe in it, we have not patronized it as we should; we have negleted it and let it go to the wall. President Young started up industries, home manufactures, and urged the matter upon the brethren. Factories were started under the administration of President Young in this valley, and to the north of us in Weber county, and in Provo, Springville, in Washington county— this side of St. George, and in Beaver. He was earnest about it; he saw the necessity for it, but nearly everyone of those enterprises which he inaugurated, even to the manufacture of nails, in that early day, has gone to the wall. What for? Of course eliminating the manufacture of nails (for a factory was established for that purpose) the industry

of raising cotton, of spinning cotton, of manufacturing our wool products into cloth and into other things that are useful, every one of these things has gone by the board; because labor was a little

higher here, and cloth could not be produced here quite as cheap, within a few cents per yard, as the shoddy that is produced in the east could be made and sent here, we preferred the shoddy to the real goods, and we bought the shoddy and wore it, and let

home manufacture go to the wall, and yet we believe in home manufacture! I wish we could produce here everything that is essential to our well-being — both for food and raiment, and every- thing else, and I hope that the spirit of it will come upon us. I

do not want to boast, but I want to tell you that I have the honor of wearing the last piece of home-made goods produced in Utah. I look about as well as some of you in your shoddy. [Laughter.] Of course, I may not be a judge of my own appearance. You can