Back in the days of the old Erie Canal, it looked like Logansport would become a metropolis. The canal would be an outlet to ship goods all over the world.

Unfortunately, the canal went bankrupt before it was even finished. The railroads killed it.

But then two railroads, the Pennsylvania and the Wabash, established routes through our town. On top of that we had two rivers, the Eel and the Wabash, and two federal highways, 24 and 35, passing through town.

That gave Logansport a lot more in the way of resources than most towns ever have. What happened to us? Where did we go wrong?

At one time, there was a good railroad industry in town, and it seemed like half of the people worked for it. Most of that work left town when the railroads collapsed nationwide.

We had General Tire, which became Trellborg, and that’s gone. We had a plant that made water heaters, and that’s gone. We had the RBM, which became Essex Wire, which became White Rodgers (was Emerson Electric in there?), and that left town.

Alpha Industries and the Universal Fire Engine factory closed. We had a battery factory, which left town. Modine is leaving town, and now we read that National Friction, which has become Carlisle Brake and Friction, is closing.

There have been others, but I can’t remember them all. It seems that for every business that has come to town over the years, a couple of businesses have left.

That’s bad news for Logansport, because if today’s economy remains stagnant, and I’m betting it will, we’ll be lucky if there aren’t more closings.

We have Walmart, Rural King and Home Depot now. What you might call super stores, and Walmart is breaking ground for a Super Walmart. These stores all sell goods bought overseas mostly. I wonder if we have gained or lost with them.

They have closed a lot of other stores, and the Super Walmart will want it all. When they start to really sell groceries, I wonder how many of the stores we now have will survive. I suppose it’s handy to buy everything in one store, but I’ve never been much of a Walmart shopper. Others will be, of course, to the detriment of many of the stores we now have.

I can remember when I worked on the bench as a die-maker how easy it was to find a job in Logansport. Good die-makers were treated with a lot of respect, because the manufacturing industry couldn’t exist without them.

Losing a good die-maker was a traumatic experience for any manufacturing plant, and in those days, I could have quit at one plant and walked into another and been hired on the sport. Those days are certainly gone forever, because the skills we possessed have been usurped by the CNC machines, and today most of those machines are sitting idle half of the time.

Our town used to have a good industrial base to support the rest of the businesses, but that base has eroded. Back in the ’50s no one would have believed it. Who would have thought the downtown would become what it is today?

It is sad for those of us who remember what Logansport once was, and sadder still is the fact that our congressmen and women in Washington who developed the trade policies that ruined our manufacturing still believe they were right, and won’t listen when we tell them what is happening.

Perhaps the lack of tax revenues, which is now becoming evident, will awaken them, but I doubt it. It is the taxpayer who is hurting, not those buffoons.

Sad to say, our problem is our government, not because one party or the other is in power, but because most of them are either power hungry or inept. They have been there too long, and they are mostly lawyers instead of good businessmen.

They are spending money that we will have to print not earn, and that is a certain road to ruination. If you think it doesn’t affect Logansport, look around. What do you see?

I hear a lot of people blaming big business and greed, and that’s certainly a part of it, but we had laws to prevent huge monopolies that weren’t enforced. Once upon a time our government could see the danger in business being too large. I guess they became distracted by their egos.

• Joe Bowyer is a columnist for the Pharos-Tribune. He can be reached through the newspaper at ptnews@pharostribune.com