Peru High School - Narcissus Yearbook (Peru, IN)

Page 19 text:

p-. ,f' On the Banks of the Wabash 5 . VN!

Page 18 text:

. -- .-' ,. , The Wabashland the Old Culvert

Page 20 text:

CHAMBER OF COMMERCE LETTER Dear Students: The city of Peru is one of the most splendidly located cities in the state of Indiana, from the standpoint of railway and highway transportation and accessibility over the electric rail- way lines. It has a wonderful future from an industrial development veiw point. Forlmore than thirty years the actual manufactur- ing center of the United States has been in New England, to which place the common carriers have taken iron ore, lumber, cotton and crude rubber-far, far away from their base. Iron comes from the Superior region, lumber from the far northwest, cotton from the southland and rubber from Mexico and South America. Imagine the freight differential which the consumer finally will pay on the finished product. In very recent years, intense competition has arisen between manufacturers, they realize the necessity of having their plants nearer the sources of crude material, so they are coming west- ward. Within the next ten or twenty years, Indiana, Illinois and Ohio will be the actual manufacturing center of the country. Al- ready Indiana and Illinois are the key states for agricultural ma- chinery for western farms. Such plants must be close to their channels of selling, yet near enough to basic material to meet future competition. Tens of thousands of tourists, from all directions of the com- pass, travel through Peru each year, and with the completion of State Route No. 1, torthe north and the linking up of Route No. 7, we will have the finest roadway system for national travel of any state. The heart of that travel will be at the intersection of Main Street and Broadway in our own city. The producers of iron bars and sheets will locate near the great lakes, and sometime the Indiana shore line will be dotted with steel producing plants. About them in a circle will build those manufacturers of machinery, of automobiles, of all kinds of metal goods who depend upon iron and a short carrier cost. The development of our transportation facilities is Indiana's problem for to-morrow. The sooner we begin to straighten out our roadways and permanently improve them, and connect our cities with a wonderful system of highways, already begun by the State, just so soon will we come into our own among indus- trial locators. Consider anything used as crude material, it costs less to haul it from its source into Indiana, than it does farther east. We must remember that a cent or a fraction of a cent means lessened competition to big manufacturers.