GROWTH OF FOREIGN COMMERCE. The growth of the foreign commerce of Seattle is well illustrated by the following figures, taken from the reports of the collector of customs at Port Townsend, showing the imports and exports of Seattle for the past six years, as follows: Exports. $ 1,816,577 2,409,768 3,911,414 4,571,531 6,954,749 5,030,110 9.613,159 8,785,243 10,991,985 1902 In this statement no credit is given for goods imported for transportation to interior points, or in bond to foreign countries, which amounted to $5,710,039 in 1902, making the total imports $14,495,282. SEATTLE COASTWISE TRADE. The coastwise trade exceeds the foreign commerce by a very large amount, aggregating the sum of nearly fifty millions of dollars, as follows: The coastwise business includes the trade of Alaska and Hawaii, and is segregated as follows: From the above table it will be seen that the total business-that is, the business done by the mosquito fleet-aggregates $10,716,109. If we add all these items of commerce together, it gives us the following result: Foreign commerce Coastwise trade .$31,754.528 48,839,233 Total commerce by the sea .$80.593.761 No accurate record can be obtained of the number of passengers carried on the Sound steamers, but a conservative estimate shows that the number is considerably in excess of one million. The total commerce by sea, shown by the reports of 1901, amounted to $50,298,944. Compared with these figures, the business of 1902 shows an enormous gain, as follows: Commerce of 1902 Commerce of 1901 .$80,589.781 50,298,944 Gain $30,290,837 This represents a gain of 60 per cent over the business of the year 1901. The discoveries of gold in the Klondike region of the Northwest Territory in 1897, and in many parts of Alaska later on, has enormously increased the business of Seattle, which is the chief shipping port for all of that immense territory. The Alaska trade amounts to more than $20,000,000 per annum and is rapidly increasing, as the vast natural resources of that territory in gold, copper, tin, oil, coal, iron, and other minerals, its fisheries and agricultural possibilities are being developed. CHAPTER XXXI. THE CITY OF TACOMA. The history of the birth, rise and growth of the city of Tacoma reads like the story of Aladdin's lamp. On the 1st day of July, 1873, the board of directors of the Northern Pacific Railway Company waved its wand over the site of that city, then an almost unbroken forest of giant firs and cedars overlooking a beautiful bay of Puget Sound, and since that time a magnificent city of about 60,000 enterprising and progressive people has sprung into existence, having splendid business blocks, wide and beautiful streets, schools, churches, charitable institutions, railway and steamship connections with all parts of the world, and, in general, all the adjuncts of a city of the first class, according to our modern ideas of the most advanced civilization. At that time the settlers in the locality were few in number, and they were chiefly employed in and residing in the vicinity of a sawmill which had recently been constructed by Hanson, Ackerson & Company, and which looked lonely and almost helpless in the vast wilderness of unoccupied sea and land by which it was surrounded. Charles Hanson was born in Elsinore, Denmark, but was not a dreamer like his fellow-townsman Hamlet, but, like the enterprising Vikings of Scandinavia, from whom he was descended, was one of those energetic Norsemen who in these later years roam over the sea and land in their efforts to find congenial and profitable undertakings of an industrial and not of a piratical character. John W. Ackerson and Samuel Hadlock were Argonauts of California, who with Mr. Hanson constituted the firm of Hanson, Ackerson & Company. These men saw at an early day the possibilities for the manufacture of lumber on Puget Sound and, resolving to take advantage of the opportunity thus presented, located their sawmill on the margin of the bay within the present limits of the city of Tacoma. To Mr. Ackerson is due the honor of naming the struggling hamlet which was to become known in the near future as one of the greatest commercial ports of the world. Mr. Hadlock retired from the firm in 1870, and going down the Sound, founded Port Hadlock, where he built a sawmill which has since that time done an enormous business in the making and shipping of lumber. The town of Old Tacoma was originally laid out by General M. M. McCarver, L. M. Starr and James Steele. They purchased the land from Job Carr, who made the first settlement at this point. New Tacoma was laid out principally on the donation claim of Peter Judson, who arrived there in 1853. Its rapid growth was due to the fact that it was made the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Its first survey was made by ex-Surveyor General James Tilton and Theodore Hosmer. Subsequently the two places were consolidated under the name of Tacoma. The first municipal election in New Tacoma was held on the 8th day of June, 1874. Job Carr, A. C. Campbell, J. W. Chambers, A. Walters and S. C. Howes were elected its first board of trustees. Tacoma became the county seat of Pierce county in 1880. The selection of Tacoma in 1873 as the terminus of the Northern Pacific Railway was the chief factor in its rapid growth and development. During the same year a section of the road was completed and opened, extending from the north bank of the Columbia river at Kalama to Tacoma. The largest towns at that time in the Pacific northwest were Portland and Victoria. The route between the two was by river steamers from Portland to Kalama, thence by rail to Tacoma, and thence by Sound steamers to Victoria and intermediate points, Seattle being the largest town on the route. But fourteen years elapsed before the transcontinental line of the Northern Pacific crossed the Cascades and entered Tacoma from the east. Its growth was slow from 1873 to 1887. In 1880 its population was 1,098. In 1900 the federal census credited Tacoma with a population of 37,714. According to reasonable estimates made from the city directory and the school census, the population in 1903 is not less than 60,000. Tacoma's rapid growth is attributed to two principal causes: first, the industrial, and second, the commercial development of the city. Tacoma possesses unusual facilities for manufacturing in several important fields of industry. The first superior advantage is abundance of cheap power; the second is the possession r command of the materials, and the third is direct. transportation by rail, steam or sail with all the principal markets of the world. Washington has incalculable supplies of coal of excellent quality for producing heat and generating steam. The coal is stored in the Cascade. mountains, and the mines of Pierce, Kittitas, and King counties are in close and direct railway communication with Tacoma. It is said that cars loaded with coal at fifty mine openings in western Washington would run by gravity into Tacoma by simply loosening the brakes. Tacoma has huge bunkers for coaling steamships, and a line of colliers plies constantly between this port and San Francisco. The best coking coal yet mined in Washington is found |