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Show NATIONAL COPPER BANK LETTER Salt Lake. Mar 4 The year 1D12 was a most interesting one. full of kaleidoscopic changes. At its opening, open-ing, opinion as to the future outlook I was very much mlxel indeed For' I about two years business had been! transacted from day to day only, because be-cause mediocre crops, high prices, Ismail olume of business an, slow-, collections coupled with the constant Ipoiitciai turmoil, had reduced the average av-erage business man to a state of absolute ab-solute uncertainty and trepidation re-jgaruing re-jgaruing the future The,, was a heavy demand for funds from Europe : which, as events bave since showed. I were to finance the most active year European commerce ever saw, an ac-tivity ac-tivity that persisted and urew in tho face of severe labor troubles and two wars. Ours Is a large and growing coun-jtry coun-jtry with a population Increasing at the rate of about l.Tf'O.tinn r,,.r annum Our normal requirements therefore! increase something like 5 per cenl i each vear and inasmuch as business jhad practically stood still for many months, it follows that there had accumulated ac-cumulated a large amount of deferred I business to be taken care of when rea! activity did finally commence Noi only among the purchasers of steel but of almost all manufactured products. bulng had been cut to the bono In the effort to economize an l ibv way of marking time until the! .business world could decide whether I It dared tr put much faith In the future. A notable Instance of the decree to which business had been deferred was I the railroad equipment situation. The railroads had been paring their i maintenance accounts unmercifully land had spent verv little on new l rolling stock, so that they were practically prac-tically a year behind In the ordering of freight cars and locomotives, and. In order to escape being overwhelmed overwhelm-ed bv even the normal business which j would fall upon them, they began, In I February and March to order equipment equip-ment in greater volume The movement move-ment gathered hdway ind ail the equipment manufactories ire now I crowded with bulnec The Baldwin locomotive fjsctory. for Instance, is employing more mn than ever before j in its history, and has business on Its I honks for months ahead. Similar statements could be made of other kindred Hne6. The forward movement wa? accelerate)! accel-erate)! to some extent bv the fnct thai for some months prior to 1912, and In j the first part of that vear. priees In Europe had risen faster than those I here thus making Amerlcs a favor-j table market plaee for the rest of the I world snd consequents. Incroas'ng jour 1f12 exports to a poinl unpreeo-I unpreeo-I dented Domestic buying orders of all kinds and from all parts of the country coun-try began to multiply, snd new build-ing build-ing picked up at a rate entirely unwarranted un-warranted bv the mere fact of the coming of spring As the prospect for record -breaking crops became more ami more a certainty, the volume of (business grew until by the end of j summer it had reached a point higher 'than had been touched before tor s I long time in October the rallri gross earnings made the greatc ' gaip over the eorrrppondin--' ,,u' year before that IS known in the his tory of American railroading. and their aggregate revenues were larger by mnn, million?, than any previously on record Th eiectrieni world was keenly active ac-tive it is ei tlmated that over I iro billions of dollars were spent In the United Slates for new construction and machines- and for service, shout 12 per cent more than In 1911 With the large items of new construction now Koing forward and In view or the , j rapidly increasing patronage of elec-trlral elec-trlral service companies the present j a Mm yer. r ran scarcely fall fo he even more active than the past one along this line, and the copper producers can take much comfort in the outlook. The Chicago. Milwaukee &. Puget Sound railway is now busily engaged in the electrification of a 450 mile stiietch of its lino across Montana. The D R ', has semi officially an nounceel a similar intention as to its line across the mountains from Helper. Help-er. Utah, to Sail Lake City, and It Is rumored that others will follow suit. The importance of the move In this region of plentiful hydroelectric pow-i er may be guessed from the estimate of the Milwaukee engineers thut train operating costs will be cut practical ly in half under electrification and that the whole cost of the improve ment will be paid from the savings of the first five years. These savings will come from several sources which we have not space to detail, but one of them is worth especial note, I. e , the rather astonishing fact that with Bt un power the lntermountain roads are compelled to utilize a third of their rolling stock, which under electrification elec-trification could be used for the handling hand-ling of ordinary freight. In hauling coal to themselves. Luring the year u company headed by W. F Jensen of the Jensen Creamery Cream-ery company and backed by other powerful Interests was organized for the purpose of supplying the farmers of this territory with dairy cattle on i time, and is really one of the big things undertaken this year. Utah la already known as a dairying state and produces a large annual total of creamery products and condensed milk Yet Utah, though a natural dairy state, has only 30 milk cows on each 1,000 acres of farm land, while Iowa has 47. Our farmers are throwing throw-ing away hundreds of thousands each year through omitting to sell their grass and grain feeds in the most profitable pro-fitable way. 1 e . as butter or pork. Utah imports large quantities of creamery products inferior to its own. to the loss of our producers and consumers con-sumers alike. This gives us occasion occa-sion to remind the farmers of Utah that they are even more negligent as to hogs than as to dairying. As a matter of fact, there are not enough to supply our local packers. Iowa I farmers have leurned that the most profit In dairying is had when hogs are kept to utilize the skim milk and the grain. They have found that hug j raising has done more than any other division of farming to pay off Iowa I farm mortgages and to change the I state from a borrower to a lender, j Consequently there are 311 hogs in Iowa for every 1.000 acres of farms, i while In Utah where conditions aro ideal for the industry', we handicap ourselves heavily because we onl have 2.. hogs to each 1,000 acres of farm land. Salt Lake has had another year of building, the permits totalling nearly $5,500,000. It is wortj) noting that the . building has been of a high class, onlv 8 8 ir cenl of the total being of frame construction. A slightly larger proportion pro-portion of the residence building was of that class, but even there the per-centage per-centage was only 6.7 per cent The 1 ' .-id'-m e !- lU ,, ,H0f t i ?in nnu and, as we pointed out last year, It Is this Item which really Indicates the city's growth. In sniie of the Increase the number of residences available for rental is doopplng In November a painstaking census of the city was mpde with the result that oniy 700 vacant buildings, both houses and stores, were found. Including about 300 uninhabitable shacks in rarious parts of the city. The available pup ply has been still further cut down until today it is doubtful whether there are 250 habitable and uuoccu-j uuoccu-j pled dwellings In the city, a fac t , which Mis its plain story of local prosperity, and an almost equally plain story of prosperity throughout the whole territory of which Salt Lake is the commercial center, because Belt I Lake cannot prosper bv Itself Similar Simi-lar evidence is brought by the Utah 1 Light & Railway company, which has , 1172 more electric light connections outside of the commercial district ( than it had a year ago. and has hauled 10 per cent more street car p-issenger.j In 1012 than 191 The Btamp sales of the Salt Lake postoffiee. segregated segregat-ed because they show more accurate ly the trend of business than do the gross totals show nn Increase for the last year of C,.:, pftr cent |