Peru High School - Narcissus Yearbook (Peru, IN)

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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.

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

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The industrial survey of the Chamber of Commerce, which is now being made, will show a pay roll of at least 38,000,000 a year from our industrial sources. With an increased pay roll from railway improvements within the next eighteen months, the total easily will be swelled to S10,0000,000. Already the aver- age wage is? higher than the average city of our size, but a re- quirement of skill is also demanded, indicating a wholesome and permanent industrial activity. ' We make articles of national consumption. Many of our products may be found in homes in every large city of the coun- try. The phonograph, no longer a luxury but a household nec- essity, broadcasts its music in hundreds of thousands of homes. Our refrigeratorsfkeep healthy and clean a large part of the food of the nation. Peru-made steam tractors till tens of thousands of acres from coast to coast. Shipping boxes, made in our city, envelop millions of cubic feet of merchandise. Our electrical porcelain bases and fittings are used in every large city in its buildings. Baskets by the hundreds of thousands are carried by the women of the nation. Furniture, underwear, kitchen cabi- nets, in fact a dozen other things made in Peru are used and well known the nation over. Peru-printed stationery is distributed to every civilized country in the world by the largest and most ef- ficient plant of its kind in the world. The winter quarters of the American Circus Corporation have been advertised to countless millions of American people and thousands of persons, who have seen their large circuses elsewhere, visit the winter quarters here each winter. Frances Slocum entered the pages of the United States his- tory when, as a child, she was carried away by Indians, from her home in Wilkesbarre, Pennsylvania. She lived just east of Peru and a monument by her descendants marks her last resting place. The Miamis and other powerful Indian tribes covered our grounds with their wigwams, and traceable sites are yet to be seen nearby. Peru is a wonder city, with its beautiful winding, river, well planned streets, massive public buildings and many summer re- sorts within easy driving distance. And she will continue to grow more important in manufacture, in transportation and in busi- ness just as we work together as citizens with a true confidence in her future and the blessings of a truly cooperative community L. E. DEUBLE, Secretary Chamber of Commerce. spirit.