To Such Persons As Have A Desire To Come West, And Are Not Inclined To
Be Farmers, And Who Have Not Capital Enough To Engage In Mercantile
Business, There Is Sufficient Employment.
A new country always opens
avenues of successful business for every industrious man and woman;
more kinds even than I could well enumerate.
Every branch of mechanics
needs workmen of all grades; from the boy who planes the rough boards
to the head workman. Teaming affords good employment for young men the
year round. The same may be said of the saw-mills. A great deal of
building is going on constantly; and those who have good trades get
$2.50 per day. I am speaking, of course, of the territory in general.
One of the most profitable kinds of miscellaneous business is
surveying. This art requires the services of large numbers; not only
to survey the public lands, but town sites and the lands of private
individuals. Labor is very high everywhere in the West, whether done
by men, women, or children; even the boys, not fourteen years old,
who clean the knives and forks on the steamboats, get $20 a month and
are found. But the best of it all is, that when a man earns a few
dollars he can easily invest it in a piece of land, and double his
money in three months, perhaps in one month. One of the merchant
princes of Boston, the late Col. T. H. Perkins, published a notice in
a Boston paper in 1789, he being then 25, that he would soon embark on
board the ship Astrea for Canton, and that if any one desired to
commit an "adventure" to him, they might be assured of his exertions
for their interests.
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