Page 11 - Industries_of_San_Antonio

SAN ANTONIO.

THE COMMERCIAL METROPOLIS OF SOUTHWEST TEXAS.

INTRODUCTORY.
"Energy and perseverance will accomplish everything," is a saying
almost as common to our hearing as is the household conversation, but it
is not applicable alone to the happenings of those sacred precincts. It is
the soul of encouragement in every undertaking. The larger and more
portentous the effort, the oftener and more necessary it is to hear those
happy words inciting to renewed energy, inspiring to new and grander
ambition, which, with the watchword "onward," cannot fail to give the
after-satisfaction of having accomplished the worldly mission.
Ambition and rivalry enter into the composition of every human
being's nature, with the desire for emoluments, either in worldly goods or
reputation. They are, and ever have been, the ruling passions of those
seeking new and open fields for the exercise of inherent characteristics;
and in no place are these characteristics more positively and plainly
revealed than in the daily routine of commercial life as seen in every vil-
lage, in every town and in every city of our western country. They are
demonstrated by the growth from comparatively small and unknown
stage points, in the course of a few years, into the city of rank, of wealth
and credit.
Capital ever exists 'in the control of a favored few; but never, in the
history of the world, did a community of industrious, determined and
capable people struggle for the improvement of surroundings and enrich-
ment of themselves, that this capital did not find its way among them:
first in the possession of prospectors, and gradually diffused through the
masses by the development of mercantile industry; the manufacture of
those staples attainable in the immediate neighborhood, and, finally, call-
ing the attention of older and more wealthy districts to a game of compe-
tition, indulging heavily and sharing mutually the profits of the great
stake of patronage.
With these facts staring us in the face, and with the thousands of
possibilities suggested to the mind by the recent development of our
western country in its many different industries, we can but look forward
to a bright and prosperous future for the entire section—in growth, in
population and in industrial importance—unsurpassed in the history of
America.