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Show DEAD TOWN VERY SELDOM RECOVERS Community That Is Not Prosperous Prosper-ous Cannot Attract New Residents. IS LIKE BIG CORPORATION People Are Stockholders and When They Spend Their Money Away From Home They Deplete Its Capital. (Copyright.) There is nothing deader than a dead town. Try as hard as it may to conceal con-ceal the facts, the truth is written all over it so that he who runs may read. No camouflage of bluff and bluster can conceal the true situation from anyone who comes within the limits of the community. A dead town is dead and that's all there is to it. The worst of it is that once a town dies it stays dead. There have been exceptional cases in which dead towns have been revived, have taken on new life and prospered, but these are merely mere-ly the exceptions that prove the rule. The fact that a town can seldom "come back" is easily explained. The growing and prosperous town today is the one that can attract new residents resi-dents and new capital. It is one that can offer attractive Inducements for the location of new industries. The dead town offers no attraction to outside out-side capital. A man looking for a place to launch a new business or a new location for an old industry, is not going to pick out a dead town. He is going to select a town in which money is plentiful, a town whose business busi-ness men are progressive and whose residents, as a whole, are prosperous and contented. There are too many live and thriving towns in the world for a man to risk his future in one that is dead. This Is the reason that a town, once dead, almost always remains re-mains dead. Town Like Corporation. There is just one thing, ordinarily, that kills a town in the first place and that is a lack of money. A town is just like a corporation and the money possessed by its inhabitants is its capital. cap-ital. If this capital is depleted the town will fail just as the corporation, whose capital is depleted through poor management or other causes, fails. And just as the corporation which has once failed can seldom retrieve its lost fortunes, the town -which has failed cannot often "come back." The capital of a community is depleted de-pleted when its money is spent away from home in a way that brings no return benefit to the community. It takes no great amount of thought to be able to realize that the town, like the individual, cannot last long if it is paying out more money than it takes in. That does not mean that a prosperous town is one in which the people do not spend any money. On the contrary, a prosperous town is one in which the people do spend money mon-ey but it is one in which they spend the money at home. As long as the money is spent at home, the town gains by having it kept in circulation, but when it is spent away from home, either by being sent to the mail order houses or by shopping trips to other cities, the town's capital is impaired to that extent and if enough money is spent away from home in that way, the town collapses and virtually goes into bankruptcy just as does the corporation cor-poration which dissipates its capital. The people of a community are apt to overlook the fact that they are stockholders in their town and that their fortunes are bound up with those of the community as a whole. They do not realize that if their town fails they will fail with it. They or many of them at leaot send their money away to the mail order houses in the great cities, without realizing that they are Impairing the capital of their own corporation and that If enough of them pursue that course they will force their corporation into certain bankruptcy. Merchants Not Only Ones Hurt. Many customers of mail order houses say that they are under no obligation to trade with their home merchants and this may be true. They overlook that fact that the business men of a town do much for their community com-munity and are entitled, in return for what they do, to the support of the people in the community, but leaving tills out of consideration, they overlook over-look the fact that they are bringing about their own downfall when they drain their town of its money its capital. The home merchant will not be the only one that will be hurt when the town "goes broke." The mcnluint can reduce his stock and cut down his expenses aud get along some way or he can sell out and move to some other oth-er town which has not been so blind to Its own welfare. It is the great body of the people o the community including all those who have sent their money away to other cities Instead of spending it at home, that suffers most when the hard times cine. The time for at! the people to pull together for a live town is while the town is still live and not after it is j dead, for when a town dies it Is a j long time dead If cot forertr. |