Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 53.djvu/453

Rh equal capital. The ten-per-cent man will soon have more capital, from his extra thrift; and the seven-per-cent man, seeing his prosperity, is apt to pull up stakes and quit his town, and move to the ten-per-cent town; and other merchants will perhaps do the same thing, until, by competition increasing in the one town by other merchants coming in, and decreasing in the other by their going out, profits may be made the same. This, however, is not apt to make profits the same in a country like ours, for there is generally new trade to be looked up to keep pace with the newcomers. So the result would be that the newcomers would continue to go to the ten per-cent town from the seven-per-cent town and other places, till the one becomes a large and prosperous city, and the other a dilapidated, languishing town. It will be easy then to say which storehouse is the most valuable.

In this there is little of novelty; but in the homely, clear illustrations which Mr. Ensley employed for impressing his fellow-citizens with the truth of his propositions, novelty is not wanting. Thus, for example, he says:

"I hold that, of all men, the real estate, or fixed property man, is most interested in the rule or motto I have adopted. To illustrate, I will say that there is an acre of ground in the city of Memphis, Tennessee, say in front of the Overton Block, that is worth at the rate of two hundred thousand dollars per acre, while the writer has an acre six miles below the city, quite as good naturally, and even better than the Overton Block acre, because it will produce more corn, cotton, pumpkins, peas, potatoes, cabbage, etc., than the Overton acre will, or ever would, and my acre is not worth one hundred dollars per acre. Now why is it that the Overton acre is worth two hundred thousand dollars per acre, and mine not worth one hundred dollars? The reason is that there is employed on the Overton acre, profitably, two, three, four, or five hundred thousand dollars of movable property, while upon mine there is employed the sixteenth part of a negro, the sixteenth part of a mule, plow, hoe, etc. now, if you will manage in any way, either by taxation or otherwise, to drive from this Overton acre the two, three, four, or five hundred thousand dollars, and affect the Overton acre so that this capital, or any part of it, can not be employed on it with a profit, it will not be worth more than my acre—in fact, not so much, for there is nothing so valueless as ground covered with houses, when there is no demand for said houses. And, further, if you do anything to make the two, three, four, or five hundred thousand dollars pay less profit, you will damage the ground, or lessen its value, more rapidly than you will decrease the profits—not in the same ratio, but more rapidly. Suppose, for instance, the profit has been ten per cent net on the