Page 26 - Industries_of_San_Antonio

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COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES.
tied up in rags or corn-sacks, or any recepticle which can possibly keep
it together. Every grocery store, dry goods house, even hotels and
bar-rooms, in instances, present at the door-way a sack of some descrip-
tion, the payment of a debt or proof of trust in the proprietor to dispose
of it at best advantege; the wool-buying establishments in particular—
with dozens of wagons before their doors, waiting their turns to unload;
the wrangling about weights, the bustle for precedence in having the load
received and checked off, the alacrity and smile of happiness with which
the countryman receives his check and whips up his horses to the nearest
camp yard, hailed by a dozen wagoners, as he crosses the plaza, to know
who was his buyer and the price received, presents a sight, truly, like any
mart where a staple is prolific and all souls happy—but there is some in-
definable charm about the mode of procedure in San Antonio.
The depots are another sight of interest, proving the traffic that has
occurred through the country and at little way-stations. Separate ware-
houses are constructed for the receipt of wool alone. Cars, half a dozen
at a time, are emptied of their burdens, and with the weird songs and
shouts of the truckmen, showing that the more business and hurry, the
greater the enthusiasm among the workers.
It will be remembered that each year brings two seasons for, and two
crops of wool.
The counties named pour all their products into San Antonio's mar-
kets. Their soils are productive of everything necessary to man: Corn,
wheat, nuts, fruits, cotton, some sugar, and other fruits of soil in abund-
ance.
Those to the east of San Antonio give an equal shipment to Houston
and Galveston, but the last few years of experience are teaching them that
their goods are worth as much to the home merchants as those in cities
to the east.
San Antonio's people are alive to the fact that they can and must cap-
ture all this trade, and have sent their emissaries through all the country
guiding the products to their doors; and when the road to Corpus Christi
is completed, and they can offer shipment of the producer's bale of cotton
to New York at three-fifths the existing rate, it will no longer need ex-
planation and persuasion, for the difference of about two dollars will make
it the farmer's duty to avail himself of the benefit, and, particularly so,
when the cash price is offered at his door.
Besides the products and trade of all this part of Texas being the
future exclusive claim of San Antonio, another important factor must he
considered—the control of that trade which must supply the entire north
of Mexico. Already, as far as transportation facilities permit, it is coming,
from choice, to her doors, and it will be readily seen how quickly the peo-
ple herald the opening of another road to bring them an increase of popu-
lation, a greater value to their labors, more facilities for tilling the earth
and opening their rich mineral mines, at once an incentive to capitalists to