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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 6 |
| 1898 | 15 |
| 1899 | 1 |
22 stories matching allow
- The Butter Fraud Crackdown
State officials threaten public exposure for wholesalers passing off cheap eastern butter as premium Washington creamery product.
- The Campaign for Wide-Tired Wagons
A push for state legislation to mandate wider wagon tires to preserve Washington's rural roads from destruction.
- The Expert's Guide to the Inland Empire Orchard
A federal pomologist warns Northwest growers against over-watering and bad variety selection, while offering tips on pest control.
- The Palouse Wheat Harvest Disappointment
Farmers in the Palouse country face a double blow: lower-than-expected yields and a market price that refuses to budge.
- The Rural Route Comes to Stay
Postal inspectors ride the 30-mile Yakima circuit and find 200 mailboxes where there were none — and a carrier pay raise to $400 a year.
- The Saloon at the State Fair: A Temperance Warning from Yakima
An impassioned editorial condemns the state fair commission for auctioning saloon rights, warning that liquor will corrupt young men and tarnish the fair's educational mission.
- The Railroad’s 160-Acre Bet on Cotton in the Columbia Basin
The O.R.N. set aside land near Wallula to test cotton, sorghum, peanuts, tobacco, and more—with and without irrigation—and invited farmers to copy the results.
- Yakima Sheepmen Stand Together Against Railroad's Strings-Attached Lease
Two dozen Yakima-area sheepmen signed a pact to reject Northern Pacific's demand that all their wool and sheep ride its rails—only to hear the company might hand their range to outsiders.
- The Orchardist Who Told the State Its Moth Spraying Was Useless
In 1898, a North Yakima grower argued that the state's codlin-moth spray schedule did not fit the Yakima Valley's climate—and warned that apple and pear growing might be doomed without better field science.
- The Fumigation Didn't Take: Live Scale Found on Japanese Oranges
A King County fruit-growers' committee inspects a shipment of imported oranges that the state's own commissioner had fumigated, finds the mealy bug and scale still alive, and demands stricter enforcement before the fruit goes on sale.
- While Seattle Chased Klondike Gold, Portland Quietly Bought the Farm
An 1897 editorial warns Puget Sound that its Klondike outfitting boom is blinding it to a $150 million agricultural trade that Portland is stealing from the inland Northwest.
- Dairymen Declare War on the 'Bogus Butter' Combine
Washington's dairymen vote to petition Congress after their own dairy commissioner admits he cannot stop cheap oleomargarine shipped straight through to Alaska — and one delegate proposes dyeing it black.
- Spokane’s Fifteen-Cent Fair Was a Dollar Show for the Inland Empire
In October 1897, Spokane turned a downtown block into a clean, no-gambling agricultural exposition—and invited the whole Inland Empire to admire its fruit, grain, and future.
- The Debts a Country Owes Its Farmers — and Its Farmers' Wives
An 1898 farm-column editorial tallies what rural Washington neglects: untrained road supervisors, school directors so illiterate the legislature had to bar them, and farm women who never see a newspaper or a neighbor.
- Seattle's Fruit Growers Take On the Wholesalers — and City Hall
A lively meeting of the King County Fruitgrowers' Society pushes for a cooperative cannery, hears a pioneer judge denounce the middlemen who ship in California's cast-offs, and calls out a city council that once tried to license peddlers out of business.
- The Palouse Wheat Boom Was a Gold Mine—Until the Debt Came Due
An agricultural professor traces the Palouse’s speculative wheat economy: inflated land purchases, the rain-ruined crop of 1893, the panic that followed, and the sudden recovery by 1897.
- A Filthy Milk Trial, a Lenient Judge, and a Convention's Disgust
The state dairy commissioner lost his Tacoma case against two milkmen whose cows were caked in manure — and the delegates wanted to know what kind of milk the judge kept on his own table.
- The Cattle Boom That Was Selling Off Its Own Future
A Northern Pacific land examiner warns that Nebraska buyers are sweeping up Washington breeding stock, prices are surging in Yakima County, and an Adams County artesian well could open a new grazing frontier.
- Don't Bond the Valley to a Dry Ditch
A Wenatchee editor warns that a $100,000 Wright-law irrigation bond would repeat the Kennewick failure—leaving settlers with debt, abandoned orchards, and no water.
- The Berry Math That Made Puyallup
A fruit-growers' manager laid out the 1898 economics of Western Washington berries: $1 a crate, 75-cent hired labor, and a cannery on the horizon.
- The Dairy Commissioner’s War on Adulterated Food
A Washington dairy official warns that fake honey, poisoned candy, oleomargarine and brewers’ grain are cheating farmers — and demands stronger pure-food laws.
- A Fruit Grower's Pitch: Stop Sending Cash East — Feed Alaska Instead
Before the Northwest Fruitgrower's Association, S. L. Moore argued that Washington farmers should diversify beyond wheat and prunes, supply Alaska and Western markets, and let the Northern Pacific's traveling fruit exhibit lure settlers west.