Railroad; William Milnor Roberts, Colonel Isaac W. Smith, Charles A. White, D. D. Clarke, J. Tilton Sheets, and V. G. Bogwe amongst its engineers; Colonel C. P. Ferry, the son-in-law of General M. M. McCarver, already mentioned, who had been already identified with the upbuilding of Tacoma from its earliest beginnings, and who has done much to cultivate that spirit of beauty and artistic taste in its public and private life which have always marked its progress. Ferry's Museum is an interesting monument of his zeal and energy in that direction. Many other deserving names might be mentioned in the same category did space permit.

While the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, under different phases of management, receivers and courts, and finally under its own legitimate officers and agents, was struggling to complete its great work with the assistance of an enormous land grant of alternate sections for forty miles on each side of its roadbed, another one of those giants in the capacity for great undertakings who make their appearance occasionally, was coming to the front in the person of James J. Hill, whose extraordinary ability in the construction and operation of lines of transportation, both on land and water, and who has been equally distinguished as a great financier, was engaged in the building of another railway line from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. As the great advantages of the latter point and its surroundings became known to the masters of trade and transportation, they at once made it the objective point for most of the railway lines terminating on the Pacific coast. Without a subsidy, a land grant or any other assistance from the government, Mr. Hill and his able associates constructed a line which reached Seattle in 1893, and which since that time has taken a leading part in the settlement of the country, in the building up its commercial interests and developing its vast mineral and other resources.

From small beginnings in 1882 they have built up a railway system which now aggregates 5,562 miles, and which has important and convenient connections with most of the railway and steamship systems of the country.

Following the "community of interest" policy first inaugurated in the northwest by Henry Villard, Mr. Hill has effected a combination between his own road the Great Northern, the Northern Pacific, with its 5,475, and the Burlington with its 8,433 miles of road, and has thus practically combined 19,470 miles of railroad under one management for the protection of their mutual interests and for the benefit of the public by furnishing the best and cheapest service to be had under economical management and with due regard to the interests of all concerned. This combination of roads penetrates directly into all parts of the Mississippi Valley, by its connections with eastern lines, and at Seattle with lines of steamships to the East Indies and elsewhere, thus furnishing facilities for travel and transportation on a larger, cheaper

and more extensive scale than has ever before been seen in the history of· the world.

To still further cheapen and simplify these already convenient and widely extended means of communication, Mr. Hill is building, and will soon have in commission, two enormous ships to operate between Seattle and East India ports, of 28,000 tons each, and which are larger than any other ships ever built for such a purpose. When completed he expects to carry freight to and from the Orient at such low rates as to defy all competition. In addition to the facilities heretofore provided at Seattle for the transaction of its already large and rapidly growing business, this railroad combination is expending some five millions of dollars in the construction of wharves, docks, warehouses, depots, freight and passenger, a tunnel under the city for the more expeditious handling of cars which alone will cost some two and onehalf million dollars. Its facilities for providing fuel are, in themselves, of immense advantage over other cities or possible rivals in business. It owns its own coal mines within a radius of fifty miles, and with its modern methods of mining and handling coal it can place this important article in the bunkers of its ships at $1.50 per ton. When present plans now in the course of construction are completed it will be able to transfer the corn, wheat and cotton which it brings from the Mississippi Valley, or the machinery, iron and other products of the eastern states, to the holds of its vessels without transfer to a warehouse, making but a single transfer between New Orleans or New York and Hongkong or Manila. This alone would serve to cheapen the cost of transportation immensely in these days of swift and close competition when every item is of importance.

This vast scheme of improvement for the transaction of business at Seattle, which has heretofore grown faster than the means for its accomplishment could be supplied, is now being carried on by the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, which found it necessary to establish terminal facilities at Seattle of the most ample dimensions in order to secure its share of this business, with its subsidiary lines, the Northern Pacific Steamship Company, the Great Northern Railroad Company, with its subsidiaries, the Seattle & Montana Railroad Company and the Great Northern Steamship Company, the Pacific Coast Company and the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad Company, under agreements made by these various companies. On the "community of interest" plan these improvements are for the joint use and benefit of all these companies, which enables them to construct and operate them upon the most modern principles and in the most economical manner. Within the past two years the Pacific Coast Company has constructed seven new docks and warehouses, with a storage capacity of 58,652 tons; the Northern Pacific five new docks and warehouses with a capacity of 52,690

tons; and the Great Northern docks are being increased in size and capacity. Those built six years ago are now entirely inadequate for their intended. purposes. An extensive system of docks and warehouses is also necessary. for the immense number of local vessels known as the "mosquito fleet." Its immense wheat elevator is also being increased in capacity. The Pacific Coast Company, besides owning and operating railroads and steamship lines, also owns extensive coal mines which it operates, and also coal bunkers and machinery by which it can load coal into vessels at the rate of six thousand tons per day. The Roslyn Coal Company, a subsidiary of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, has bunkers with a capacity of three thousand tons per day. The Pacific Coast Company has recently commenced the construction of new bunkers which will double the capacity of those now in use, and which will be furnished with the best appliances that modern ingenuity has yet devised. These companies are also engaged in filling in two hundred and fifty acres of tide flats in the southern part of the city of Seattle, for additional and more extensive terminal grounds, upon which they will erect a passenger station at an expense of $250,000, and also ample freight sheds and warehouses with fifty more miles of switching and yard tracks. Outside of the city limits, the Great Northern and the Northern Pacific Railroad companies, along the Duwamish and the Snohomish rivers, are each laying from seventy-five to one hundred additional miles of side tracks for the accommodation of the immense trains required in the transaction of business, which hitherto has grown faster than all their immense equipage could supply.

For the past two years the supply of cars for the transportation of cotton, grain, machinery and every other description of outbound goods has not been sufficient to meet the demand, while at the same time more cars than the companies could furnish have been called for to transport eastward the lumber, shingles, coal, fish and other eastbound products, at the same time cargoes aggregating thousands of tons of silk, teas, spices and other goods from the Orient are frequently arriving which require prompt transit to their several points of destination. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 1903, the eastbound rail shipments of lumber and shingles aggregated more than 75,000 carloads, and probably 5,000 more would have been added could cars have been had for that purpose. The cotton exports to Japan alone from the United States were, ten years ago, 793,000 pounds. For the fiscal year ending June 30, 1903, they amounted to 89,252,000 pounds, of which aggregate 64,354,000 pounds were shipped via Puget Sound, in competition with other ports on the Pacific coast, and with water transportation from Gulf ports via Cape Horn. The large and practically unlimited quanties of profitable eastbound freight from Puget Sound allows the northern transcontinental roads to

outbid all competitors. The items above mentioned are only samples of what is doing and may be done in the future in the matter of commerce on Puget Sound. There are, at the present time, thirty-nine large steamers regularly engaged in the trans-Pacific trade, aside from the government transports, which numbered thirteen vessels, having an aggregate capacity of 60,238 tons. Twelve of these ships, aggregating 96,615 gross tons, sail from San Francisco, three, with a combined capacity of 14,700 gross tons, sail from Portland, and twenty-four ships, having an aggregate gross capacity of 131,557 tons, sail from Puget Sound, including five vessels of 27,400 tons which sail from Vancouver, British Columbia, connecting with the Canadian Pacific Railway. The remaining nineteen, aggregating 104,157 gross tons, sail from Seattle and Tacoma.

In addition to the above mentioned companies having terminal facilities at Seattle, and engaged in a joint scheme of vast, comprehensive improvements, the Canadian Pacific Railroad Company has also trackage arrangements by which its cars enter Seattle and which enables it to secure a share of its commercial advantages. This company controls a system of 8,646 miles of railway in Canada and the United States, and the enormous territory it traverses is thus made tributary to Puget Sound. These various railway systems own and operate in all 28,116 miles of railway, and reach by their connections very nearly all the railroads in the United States. In addition to the railway lines now in operation in the Puget Sound Country, branches and extensions are being made in various localities, which will open up to settlement and to the development of their rich resources of an agricultural, lumbering and mining character, a large scope of hitherto unoccupied territory. The Northern Pacific is extending its line from Aberdeen and Hoquiam on Gray's Harbor, in a northwesterly direction for the purpose of connecting with the waters of the Straits of Fuca, and penetrating a section of country encircling the Olympic range of mountains which has hitherto been practically inaccessible. Much of this undeveloped territory is known to be rich in timber, with much good farming land, and is supposed to be rich in minerals of various kinds. The same company is also making surveys down the Columbia river, to connect Kalama on its Portland line with the beautiful country around Willapa Harbor and its present terminus at South Bend in Pacific county.

CHAPTER XXVI.

INDUSTRIAL PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT.

For a variety of reasons, some of which have already been mentioned, the progress of settlement and improvement in the Puget Sound Country after the close of the Indian war, and before the railroads referred to in

the preceding chapter were completed, was exceedingly slow. Immigration by land had been seriously interrupted by Indian troubles, particularly on the plains, both during and after the Civil war. The Indians, disposed on general principles to be hostile, and being only too well informed as to the conflict in which the nation was then engaged, took advantage of the fact that many troops among them had been withdrawn for service elsewhere, and were, during that war and for several years afterwards, unusually active in their unfriendly demonstrations. Yet there were arrivals by sea and land, and in time confidence was generally restored as to the permanency of peace with the Indians, and the Sound country in a few years assumed an air of peace and prosperity. Industrial enterprises that had been interrupted were resumed, and new enterprises were undertaken. The discovery of gold on Fraser river in British Columbia, in 1857-8, brought many miners from California, some of whom remained on Puget Sound, attracted by its beauty and promise for the future, and many more whose hopes were not realized in the gold mines became settlers in the Sound region when they returned.

The tardy growth of the country, however, will be more clearly understood when it is stated that, by the federal census of 1870, the population of Olympia was only 1,203, and of Thurston county 2,246, whilst in Seattle in that year there were but 1,142, in King county 2,164 people, and Tacoma was not then in existence. The town of Olympia was incorporated January 29, 1859, and the act of incorporation designated George A. Barnes, T. F. McElroy, James Tilton, Joseph Cushman and Elwood Evans as its first board of trustees. During the same year an effort was made to remove the capital to Vancouver, and the act failed in the legislature by only one vote.

Governor Stevens, on his arrival in 1853, designated, as he was authorized to do by Congress, Olympia as the capital. Subsequently the legislature confirmed his action, and the capital has ever since remained in that city. On the adoption of the present state constitution in 1889, the location of a capital was submitted to a vote of the people of the state, and they, on two separate occasions, determined that Olympia should be its seat of government, and the question now may be considered as finally settled.

ence.

During all of its earlier years Olympia and Seattle were the principal towns of the territory, and they led only a primitive and monotonous existTheir opportunities for mental and intellectual cultivation or recreation were few, but they gave their best efforts to the establishment of schools, churches, colleges and a university, recognizing these as necessary for the proper training of the rising generation to become useful American citizens.

Olympia, being the capital and the residence for many years of the territorial and later of the state officials, had many social advantages over the