Page 35 - Industries_of_San_Antonio

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COMMERCE AND MANUFACTURES.
exchange of one thing for another, and its origin is co-evil with the world.
When cattle and the soil's produce were in primitive ages, the only fea-
tures of commerce, these exchanges were more properly styled barter, for
nothing such as we now term "money" was known. In short, from the
time of the building of the first towns and cities, something in the shape
of trade must have been carried on, to supply the needs of the dwellers.
Commerce flourished, in a wide sense of the word, in Egypt and Arabia
from our earliest knowledge of them as countries, and for thirteen centu-
ries before the Christian Era they monopolized the commerce of all the
known world. Later, with the ascendency of the Roman empire, the
center of trade came to it. With its fall, national commerce ceased, but
revived to a considerable degree about 500 years after. Thus we see that
prosperity is TRADE, and that trade conducted in a manner mutually ben-
eficial to all people.
The trade of San Antonio is one which gained its present status
through determination and labor only, with the kind hand of nature to
lend us forces to utilize. She is not confined to any particular industry;
her resources have been enumerated, her population must exist, and exist
by their toil.

What more commendable act, in the eyes of an all-seeing Providence,
is there than that of supplying your neighbor with what he needs in com-
pensation for labor rendered ? The merchant, the medium through which
our raw materials are converted into the immediate sustainer of life, is
the one on whom we depend as much as he upon the producer. Without
his intervention, his labor, our city would not look with towering domes
and walls upon a happy people; but the hut, the field, and nakedness
would be our portion.
And so, to an enumeration of the principal branches of trade among
our merchants, the way in which they render their labors, and the amount
of benefit realized by all classes, constituting the power that moves us
ever to increased energy to accomplish the general good.
In collecting statistics relative to the actual business done in San An-
tonio, we must of course confine ourselves strictly to one year, and natur-
ally the latest for which they are attainable. The year 1884, as is known
to business interests throughout all America, was one of unusual depres-
sion and stringency in money matters. Not only did Texas and San An-
tonio feel this heavy weight, but particularly the rest of the western
country, where activity alone gains its daily wages. And so quoting the
words of one whose knowledge is authority : "The annual review of San
Antonio's business for the past year, will command an interest both local
and general, which is more than ordinary. We therefore wish to em-
phatically state that whatever may have been the custom in other cities,
or however much some people are disposed to discount figures, we present
nothing that is not reliable."