Page 5 - Rumbaugh

'I
--~ ..,~--
LYNCHBURG, VA., is situated on the west and south side of James River, one hundred and twenty-five miles west of Richmond, Va., and nearly two hundred south of the city of Washington, D. C., and is the natural financial
jobbing center of the state.
Founded over one hundred years ago by Jno. Lynch, from whom the city
took its name, it soon sprang into prominence as a world-famed tobacco market, both as a shipping point of leaf and of the manufactured article. So now the weary traveler in any part of the world may seek solace from all anxiety, in the fragrant smoke of "LONE JACK," or unknowingly i:\iess old Jesse Hare, who first introduced the sweet "NAVY." "
Drawing the wealth of the ~vorld through its cqie¥, an·d for a long time almost its only industry, banks of the soundest financial standing sprang into existence, so that before the war it was acknowledged the wealthiest city in the world, per capita. During the fearful crisis of r873, not a single bank closed its doors but paid all their Cle~ands in full and on presentation.
To-day, her national, state and private banking institutions stand in the front rank of progressive and conservative corporations of this country. Assets over $8,ooo,ooo; certificates of deposits over $z,soo,ooo. The credit of the city stands high; all her bonds are over par, notwithstanding her large grants to raq- roads and street improvements.
Being the first point of competition between the two great iron, coal and coke railroads, the Norfolk and Western, and the Chesapeake and Ohio, it will in the near future, become one of the great industrial centres of this country.
Already her tobacco interests em ploy numerous hands in the cigarette and cigar factories, besides the furnaces, nail works, merchants' tar mill, foundries, machine shop, pipe mill, two roller flour mills of z50barrels capacity, barytes or talc mills, spoke factory, sumac factory, canning works, bark extract used in tanning, and tobacco extract used in fixing-colors in calicoes, sash, door and blind factories, planing .mills, electric lights, street cars, paid fire department, fine graded public schools, gives her bright prospects for the race she has entered.
With competing lines north, east, south, and west, her wholesale merchants and manufacturers are willing to duplicate any northern bill in groceries, notions, smoking or chewing tobacco, cigars, cigarettes, snuff, dry goods, boots, shoes, hats, china and glass, drugs, chemicals, carriages and agricultural imple- ments, hardware, ready made clothing. In a word, any merchant buying in this market can save the difference not only in freight, but the great difference in expense of conducting the business, the wholesale houses purchase from first hands
for cash, thereby buying as cheap as the wealthiest, and then their rent is so much less, that these two items alone would put them on an equal footing for compet- ing with any trade center.