Page 13 - Industries_of_San_Antonio

COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES.
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With these encouraging possibilities and a past record of unsurpassed
prosperity, let us now review more minutely the past as well as the predes-
tined grandeur of the border city—famed in history for deeds of chivalry,
the accepted home of famous men and the pride of all mercantile ambi-
tion:
EARLY HISTORY OF SAN ANTONIO.
On entering into a descriptive review of the early history of any civil-
ized settlement, there is a remarkable similarity in the struggle through
natural or unnatural disadvantages, the perseverance and energy of those
determined to cast their lots forever with the section's future, for better
or for worse; a constant revulsion of feeling depicted in the countenance of
each enthusiastic citizen, either revealing the failure of some petted enter-
prise or the glow of satisfaction burning into happy words and congratu-
lations from neighbor to neighbor, and emanating from that deep feeling
of joy at having tried and accomplished—it may be a small endeavor, or an
enterprise that has involved the welfare, personal and monied, of a great
portion of the community.
•Lives there a man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said:
This is my own—my native land!"
and this patriotic feeling may naturally be the companion of those doomed
to fail or prosper in the community and country with which the hopes of
future prosperity are mingled, whether it be the land of nativity or not.
In the history of San Antonio's early days we find the struggles and
the conquests, the failures and discouragements besetting the community
alternately, of more than ordinary interest, and gradually developing into
more than ordinary worldly importance, until within the last few years
her strides towards commercial supremacy and success attained—com-
manding the attention of the entire West and a greater portion of the
Eastern marts—renders that history even more interesting and necessary,
particularly to the cupidity of those who have looked on from a distance
in wonder; yes, even awe and jealousy.
It is not our intention to render an exhaustive treatise on the possibil-
ities and grandeur, which might have been developed years ago with the
aid of enlightenment and capital, for those days are past and the present
is what commands most deservedly our attention, together with the bright
prospects of the future; nevertheless, a cursory review of those historical
days of struggle will be appreciated by many of the romantic turn of mind,
and :will date back to the infantile days of America, when the struggle for
independence was the ordained apportionment of every soul within the
new and hoped-for land of general freedom.
In the history of the State of Texas, we find, as in the history of all
civilized nations, that prosperity and contentment must ever be bought
with blood; and it is not a little to the discredit of the prosperous in our