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Show r W Tooele Smelters and the Farmers HJ i?j; Murray Schick THERE was a great celebration in. Tooelo county in September, 1908, when the goners'1 goner-s'1 al manager of the Utah Consolidated Mining Hi! company distributed $100,000 among the farm H') owners of that county in payment for land and Hj casements from smoke damage to laud. 'Iho H' mining company bought 1,G00 acres outright ana H paid 10 per cent of the agreed value of 30,000 Hj acres. If the farms wore seriously damaged by H smoke from the smelter, which the company pro-Hi pro-Hi posed to build the owners were to get the other Hj ninoty per cent of the valuation and the company Hi was tu take over the lands. j It surely was a great day in Tooele one nun-H nun-H dred thousand dollars in real money turned loose j among the agricultural population at one time. M There verovonly about 300 farms in the whole H county and the total expenditures of these farms 1 fOr a year were less than $100,000. H No wonder the people looked in their Hostet-H Hostet-H tor almanacs to see if the millennium had sure H anough arrived. l It wasn't the millennium exactly, but it was a decided step in that direction so far as the in- H dustrial prosperity of Tooele valley was con- M cerned. The International Smelting company H followed in the wake of the Utah Consolidated, fl took over its land, contracts and casements and spent the appraised value of all the land and farm H Improvements in Tooelo county on a new smelting H plant. M On July 25, 1909, Governor Spry touched a H match to the content of one of the furnaces at H the smelter and the valley witnessed, with every H evidenco of satis"nction, the beginning of the H most prosperous era in its history. B In selecting the site and building the Interna- H tional smelter, every care was taken to prevent H injury by the fumes from the stack. The plant H was erected at the edge of the valley near thq H mouth of Fine canyon so that the winds, which H blow from the northwest nine-tenths of the time, H would carry the smoke into the canyon and away H' from the farms. H . People who have visited Tooele at vr.rl H intervals will make oath that the winds have done H all, and even more than was expected of them. H Some visitors still make oaths whenever they H think of those winds. H' I Visitors will testify also that the alfalfa plant- H, ' ed in close proximity to the smelter and culti- Hj . vated under the direction of the company has H yielded as good crops as before the furnaces were B lighted. H I No wonder, is it, that everybody supposed 9 the International had sidestepped the controver- H sies over smelter fumes which have annoyed and H handicapped ore dressing plants in all parts of H the west? H i. A story was published this week to the effect H that a considerable number of Tooele county H landowners had figured out that it was time for H ' another millennium and were about to strike the H f smelting company for the rest of the money that H was to be paid in the event of smoke damage. H "Fifty" is the number of disgruntled farm- B ' owners mentioned in the story. H jj It may be that fifty farmers around Tooele are Rj I anxious to sell their land and it may be that the H leport is exaggerated, but in either case it is a B 1 good bet that smelter smoke has little to do with H j the matter. H,j The farmers may think it has for men who BH J are unsuccessful are prone to blame anyone but D i themselves but everything tenc'j to show that B they are mistaken, and that any incidental dam- m 1 ago to crops is more than compensate by the H H improvement in the local market for farm products pro-ducts duo to the establishment of the smelter. If the discontented grangers will analyze the statistics of the last census they may see things in a different light. Among other things they will discover that the average value of farm land in Tooele county in 1910, a year after the copper furnaces wero blown in, was three times what it was in 1900. In 1900 the land was worth $8.14 and in 1910, $24.80 an acre. (Now, if land has trebled in value in ten years, as the census indicates, the landowners have received re-ceived a much larger return than the smelting company. But there is a little kink in the census cen-sus here. In 1900 the census included 2'8,000 acres of grazing land which were omitted in the 1910 returns. Allowing for this .difference the appreciation of land values has been at least 150 per cent. Probably the International will bo satisfied if the value of its stock increase 50 per cent in ten years. Let the farmer ask himself what caused the 150 per cent advance in the value of his land. Improvements? The number of acres of improved im-proved land increased from 27,000 to only 34,000 in the decennial period and the value of all farm property buildings, stock, ditches, etc., included, in-cluded, increased only G0.1 per cent. The greater part of the increase was due to population, railroads and markets. And, with all respect for the honest farmer, it was not the farms that brought the population, railroads and markets. Look at the census again. That tells us the number of farms in Tooele county coun-ty was less in 1910 than in 1900. The industries especially the mining and smelting industries created the present farm values of Tooele county by bringing population, railroads and markets to the farmers. Notice this, also, the value of the land and buildings per farm in Tooele county in 1910 was greater than in any other county of the state. Sanpete county, which compares In fertility fer-tility with Tooele county, had a value per farm of $3,635; Tooele's average was $8,591. While land in Tooele advanced from $8.14 to $24.80 an acre, the land in Sanpete advanced from $1G to $20, and Sanpete was not "cursed" by smelters, either. Is it asking too much to request the farmers to ponder the fact that the big farm values of the state are found in Salt Lake, Utah, Davis and Weber counties, while equally productive land in Washington, Cache and other counties brings less than half the price? Industrial development de-velopment makes markets and gives land its value. val-ue. Those who encourage land owners, whether it bo in the city or the country, to hamper and drive away industries by various forms of extortion, ex-tortion, are not the real friends of the farmers and realty holders. The best evidence of genuine friendship is a candid statement of the facts such as has been presented In this article. |
