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Show A APPEAL TO COMMUNITY LOVALTV It will not be long now until the holiday shopping will be in full swing, and before it opens we wish n have a tew words with our fellow citizens on the question of how and v.-hi -"e this holiday money is to be spent. Are you going to patronize the mail order houses this year aa per-h.-ps many of you did last year? Or are you going to, if necessary, even make a slight sacrifice and stick to home people? Whence came the money that you are intending to send to that mail order concern? Did it come from the city in which that concern is located? lo-cated? Not by a long shot. ' If you are a farmer it is the product of the soil. What soil? Why, the soil of YOUR COMMUNITY. Now you, as a practical farmer, know full well the results of the runious practice of taking everything from your land and returning nothing to it. You know that this practice must sooner or later impoverish your soil and destroy des-troy your source of Income. Can't you realize that in sending your money away from home you are doing to the community just what you would not think of doing to your farm robbing it of its productive power? You certainly are. Every dollar sent away from your community commun-ity robs it of just that much of its power for good. But perhaps you are not a farmer, but a mechanic, or trader. Then the responsibility rests even more heavily heav-ily upon you to keep your money in the home channels of trade, because all of it came from the hard earnings of your neighbors and friends, and you have no right to deprive the community com-munity of the good it can do if circulated cir-culated therein. Yes, we say XO RIGHT. No man has any right to be disloyal to his community. Deprive any man entirely en-tirely of community support and he becomes a parish worse than a Robinson Rob-inson Crusoe, for he 1b among his kind but not of them. What loneliness loneli-ness could be more terrible? If, then, you are thus dependent on your neighbors and friends, do you not owe them an equal allegiance? allegi-ance? Are they to consult your interests in-terests while you ignore theirs? This were ingratitude of the oasest sort. Just suppose, you patron of the mail order house, that for a period of twelve months every citizen of your county followed your example and did all of his trading away from home? What condition would your county be in? Would there be a solvent merchant in it? Not one. What of your schools, your churches, and all the civilizing institutions of our land? They might still survive if YOU bare all the expense not ' otherwise. Think seriously of these things, you patron of the mail order house. Realize that if you have the right to deprive your community of your money, all your neighbors have equal right imagine the consequences. Don't be an ingrate! If you have a dollar to spend, spend it at home. Thus it stays and works In the only spot on God's earth in which you are interested. Send it away and It Is gone, forever. r r The Lord loves a cheerful giver and we love a cheerful payer. How's your subscription? |