This review of the social statistics of Louisville will be concluded with a notice of the number of persons engaged in the various avocations of life, as shows in the following:
The commercial and manufacturing statistics of Louisville come next to be considered. And it is well to state here, however discreditable such statement may be to the city, that no business organization of any kind has ever been attempted and no statistical tables have ever been kept either by the city government, by societies or individuals. The only means left to the statistician, therefore, have been the tedious and often incomplete process of personal application and investigation. The statistics which are here offered to the reader are derived from the best authority and are believed to be correct, but are necessarily far less complete than could have been wished. This outline will, however, serve to give some idea of the general business character of the city.
All departments of business in Louisville are transacted upon a very large scale. It is perhaps the greatest fault in the commercial character of the city that everything is conducted upon too large a scale. There is, to use a painter’s phrase, too much of outline and too little in detail. The wealth and importance of cities depends less upon the great than upon the small dealers and manufacturers; these latter are content with doing each a small and careful business which may gradually rise to be of vast extent, and which will thus really improve and profit the city more than the mighty efforts of the large dealer. In Louisville, however, none are contented to do a little business. The feeling seems to exist that mercantile or manufacturing pursuits are respectable just in proportion to the capital employed in them, and the desire of every one seems to be to attain a high point of respectability. Louisville greatly lacks that class of inhabitants, so useful to a city, who are content to attain wealth by careful and laborious means, who can commence with the basket of apples and gradually work up to the proud proprietorship of extensive ware-houses or factories. There is everywhere prevalent among those who should seek to rise gradually, a desire to place themselves at once in a rank with the largest dealers. It is the small dealer and the small manufacturer, who is content to rise by his own efforts, unaided by factitious means of any sort, who is needed here. There is abundant room and abundant work for such, their advent is courted; and, if they will avoid the characteristic desire for extensive business relations and be content to seek their fortunes by pains-taking progress, their success is infallibly certain.
It has already been remarked that the aggregate amount of sales in any one department of business divided by the number of houses engaged in that business would show a very large result. In this statement reference is had only to those exclusively wholesale houses, whose sales are made to dealers. No exclusively retail houses of any sort are placed in the enumeration, though the sales of many of the retail stores would fully equal, if indeed they did not exceed, some of the wholesale houses. The difficulty of reaching any proper account of the retail business will, however, prevent any notice being taken of it in this volume.
Louisville contains twenty-five exclusively wholesale Dry Goods houses, whose sales are made only to dealers and whose market reaches from Northern Louisiana to Northern Kentucky and embraces a large part of the States of Kentucky, Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Illinois, Mississippi and Arkansas. The aggregate amount of annual sales by these houses is five million, eight hundred and fifty-three thousand (5,853,000) dollars, or an average of two hundred and thirty-four thousand (234,000) dollars to each house. The sales of three of the largest of these houses amount in the aggregate to one million, seven hundred and eighty-nine thousand (1,789,000) dollars. Neither this statement nor those which follow include any auction houses.
In Boots & Shoes, the sales of the eight houses of the above description reach one million, one hundred and eighty-four thousand (1,184,000) dollars, or one hundred and forty-eight thousand (148,000) dollars to each house. The sales of the three largest houses in this business reach six hundred and thirty thousand (630,000) dollars.
The aggregate amount of annual sales by eight houses in Drugs, &c., is one million, one hundred and twenty-three thousand (1,123,000) dollars, or one hundred and forty thousand, three hundred and seventy-five (140,375) dollars to each house; and the sales of the three largest houses amount to seven hundred and fifty-three thousand (753,000) dollars.
The sales of Hardware by nine houses amount annually to five hundred and ninety thousand (590,000) dollars, being an average of sixty-five thousand, five hundred and fifty-five (65,555) dollars to each house.
The sales of Saddlery reach nine hundred and eighty thousand (980,000) dollars, of which nearly one-half are of domestic manufacture.