Show the old settler written in salt lake city my illy dear san Jua ners states and nations try to run their economic affairs according to the safest known systems they pre seive careful statistics of their annual acce apts from outside sales sale and their annual disbursements for outside purchase record of their balance of trade is always a matter of vital concern if this record shows that they are paying 75 million for goods bought and receiving only 50 million for goods sold it means they are going at the rate of 25 million a year towards the rocks A knowledge of that trade balance and whether it is big on the right side should be the concern of every nation of every state of every county of every town of every family of every individual if your receipts are per and you are archiving living at the rate of you are either sponging or stealing or going into bondage at the rate of twenty five cents a day but I 1 am thinking about san juan county I 1 have a fifty year old habit of thinking about it and looking for ways in which it can be made better what would a trade blance balance sheet show for san juan who knows would it show that the county is sending out every year more than it is receiving from the outside you may insist that thai such a thing could not be but you must bar from these receipts everything coming from the red cross from the and from every source involving bolvi ng obligation of debt whatever a record of the countes coun tys receipts and disbursements might show it is a sure thing that if a record of everything concerned in the deal were carefully tabulated it would show that a stream of cash has gone out of the county for things that could have been and which by all means should have been produced at home it always did grind on me and I 1 wondered that people took it so much as a matter of course the amount of beef pork eggs butter cheese and canned stuff that came into the county to be paid for out of the already improver shed supply of cash this is no jab at the merchants their business is to supply what the people demand and if they demand from the outside the thing that should be furnishing them a job in the making the merchant may feel bad for them but he fills the order yet if he be could induce them to make these things for themselves they would have more cash to buy ly other things Ice cream is brought into san juan from the outside and bo bought aught by people who have no job only as it is supplied by some relief agency also shipments of milk dressed poultry and garden stuff and men who could produce that stuff are out of a job there is a great long string of things some of them necessary some of them quite unnecessary which people think they must have and for which they pay cash that they could make for themselves I 1 or get along without if they ap continued on page 16 1 the old settler continued from page 1 areca predated ted the baue of a safe rade balance 1 very often the trade balance is much more out of pron proportion as I 1 t relates to the individual than i as it relates to the affairs of the banty the essential thing for the life of the country is for every man to do his part in seeing that the stream of money coming into the county is greater than the stream hat bat is always going out if the people will see that the in incoming ins oming stream is greater than the other that is one way of insuring good times when the outgoing stream is greatest that is a sure sign of hard times yours for the good of san juan ALBERT R LYMAN |