[Newspaper]
Publication: Bennington Banner
Bennington, VT, United States
vol. 19, no. 46, p. 2, col. 5
CORRESPONDENCE.
EDITOR BANNER—Dear Sir:
Through your Journal, we beg leave to assure those gentlemen who have so generously and so publicly give the expression of their approval of our efforts to succeed in the difficult though interesting art we have labored so long to develop, and the influence our labors have had in forwarding the enterprises of their village, that if anything could add to the regrets we naturally feel on leaving a place which for thirty years has been our home and the field of our labors and which is endeared, to us by a thousand pleasing recollections, it is the evidence they have given that we leave behind us the regrets and good wishes of those valuable friends, who have by the countenance and encouragement contributed so materially to whatever of success may have awarded our efforts; we, therefore assure them that though we are not so presumptuous as to lay claim to all the credit and skill they have been pleased so generously to award us, we are as grateful for the tribute bestowed upon us as though it were more full deserved. Therefore, in tendering our thanks for an endorsement, at once so complimentary to ourselves, and so well calculated to secure for us the confidence and esteem of strangers among whom we are about to locate, we beg leave to assure them that the public evidence they have given us of their appreciation and good wishes, will stimulate us to deserve their esteem and the confidence they have bespoken in our behalf.
To yourself and to those of your contemporaries who have spoken so favorably of our enterprises, and so flatteringly of our skill in the development of the plastic art in this country, we also beg leave to tender our thanks, but in doing so, we owe it to ourselves as well to those skillful foreign manufacturers, who have attained so high a degree of eminence in an art on which they have reflected so much credit, to declare that with all our aspirations for public favor, we are not so vain as to suppose that in the mastery of the intricacies of an art requiring in its development the utmost proficiency in the science of chemistry, practical geology, minerology, the art of design and the chemistry of Pottery, without access to the secure laboratories of foreign manufactories, where lay hid the accumulated acquirements of ages in the art—with material untried and differing widely from that used elsewhere—forced thus to grope our way in the dark, relying on ourselves alone, aided only by such skill in its mechanical department as we could reach from abroad.
We have been able to attain that degree of proficiency in the manufacture as to entitle us to the skill you and your contemporaries have been pleased so generously to award us—nor are we so unjust as to claim that precedents in the art of find Pottery that our better judgement tells us has not yet been transferred to this country. We are however, proud to believe, from practical observation, that no country contains better material for the fabrication of Pottery Ware, that the United States, and we hazard nothing in saying that the art has been so far developed on this side of the Atlantic, as to warrant the hope that the day is not far distant when this country by virtue of the knowledge of the art already acquired—the proverbial skill and energy of our people—the convenience, quality and abundance of the raw material—the extent of the market to be cultivated, and the tempting remunerative character of the trade, will be able to secure all the advantages to be derived from this great industrial art in our own country at least.
In transferring the prosecution of our business from Vermont to the great Valley of the Mississippi, we are influenced only by the superior advantages that that locality presents over the Atlantic States, in the abundance and quality of Pottery material—its unrivalled facilities for cheap freights—the extent and rapid growth of its markets, and the superior advantages it possesses for a more successful competition with foreign manufacturers—a consideration not to be overlooked in this early stage of the enterprise in this country. With these advantages in our favor, and the practical foreign skill that a more liberal international sentiment has opened to our reach, we doubt not we shall meet the full reward our efforts may deserve.
Your truly,
C. W. FENTON,
D. W. CLARK.
Bennington, Jan. 2, 1860
