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Encourage Home Trade.

The West is not sufficiently self-reliant. Every day seems to render this assertion more and more palpable. We do not seem to be satisfied with or have the proper confidence in our schools, our newspapers, our manufacturers, merchants or artisans. If we had the money expended in the West which through the operations of such a spirit, is sent abroad we would in every direction have prosperous manufacturing establishments, schools of all desirable grades, better newspapers, and a general character for thrift, enterprise and public spirit to which we now are comparative strangers.

Every man should patronize home institutions and encourage local industry. Such patronage and encouragement is necessary to give home affairs a proper footing, to make a country prosperous and wealthy.

Our merchants and mechanics in Cairo are capable of supplying the wants of the community with every article of ordinary necessity, and as the profits of their business contribute to the aggregate of our wealth, it is certainly suicidal to our prosperity to send abroad for what they can furnish. By doing so our means of advancement are scattered, our business men thus engaged, are crippled and compelled to struggle along for no greater remuneration than a bare sustenance. We think it peculiarly the province of the people of Cairo to live within themselves as much as possible. If our schools are not good enough, if our merchants do not keep needful supplies, the remedy can be applied. Everything is essentially in our own hands. If we have not skill, enterprise and industry let us merit them and we will secure them. Let us, in fine, patronize to as great an extent as possible, our home institutions — not forgetting the local press — and we will discharge a great duty to ourselves and to the community, and reap in dollars and cents a sufficient reward.