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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 9 |
| 1898 | 15 |
24 stories matching reason
- Fire Eats a Five-Story Dormitory at the Pullman College
A brick residence hall at the Washington Agricultural College burns to the shell, taking $3,000 of students' clothing and furniture with it — and the editor cannot resist a word about the building's own bad design.
- The Great Wheat Bottleneck
Eastern Washington farmers face a crisis as railroads prioritize long-haul freight over local grain shipments, leaving warehouses overflowing.
- Seattle Sets Its Sights on Honolulu's Grocery List
A Seattle schooner sails for the islands with flour, hay and shingles aboard, and Hawaiian importers begin to wonder whether they still need San Francisco at all.
- Six Restaurants, One Sacrificial Lamb: Seattle's War on Fake Butter
Six Seattle restaurants caught passing oleomargarine off as butter cut a deal with the dairy commissioner — but not before white proprietors tried to make the Japanese owner of the California take the fall.
- The Best and Most Reliable Pickers to Be Obtained
Hop tying and strawberry picking brought cash onto the reservation and goods into Yakima's stores — and the growers knew exactly whose labor they were counting on.
- 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.
- Judge Hanford Draws the Line: Sheep Can't Graze on Railroad Land Without Consent
A federal court ruling in Yakima County upholds the Northern Pacific Railway's right to protect its unenclosed lands from sheep, setting a precedent for property rights and land use in the West.
- They Called the Prairie Worthless. He Planted Wheat Anyway.
A government immigration inspector bought gravelly land south of Tacoma and proved the skeptics wrong — sixteen bushels an acre of No. 1 hard wheat.
- The Middleman Trap: A Farm Journal Warns the Growers About Shady Commission Houses
A Northwest agricultural paper tells fruit shippers to beware 'snide concerns' that report produce as damaged and pocket the difference — and names a Tacoma firm closing its season 'under the cloud of shady transactions.'
- Washington Slams the Gate on Oregon Sheep
A new state law quarantines out-of-state flocks at the border, and the Oregon herders who have grazed Mount Adams every summer are suddenly out of luck — with 50,000 sheep and nowhere to put them.
- 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 Wheat Boom That Carried a Bust in Its Backwash
As six-bit wheat enriched the Palouse, a farm editor warned that debt and one-crop farming were setting up another 1893-style crash.
- 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 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.
- The Valley That Organized Itself: Nooksack Farmers Build a Co-op and Demand Pure Food
At a December meeting in Deming, farmers from the Upper Nooksack and Sumas Valley formed a permanent association, secured a power separator for 200 cows, and called for a pure food law to stop the adulteration of fruit jams.
- 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.
- Wenatchee Bets the Valley on Alfalfa — And Dreams of Dairy Herds
A touring correspondent finds the apple country sowing alfalfa by the acre, convinced the real money is in feed, stock and cream rather than in boxed fruit shipped east.
- The Water Belongs to the People—Not the Syndicates
A.M. Stevens of Ellensburg warns that handing arid lands to the states is the first step toward private control—and argues the federal government must build the reservoirs.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- The $80,000 Cranberry Bog Behind the Ilwaco Beach
A state commissioner tours Pacific County's cranberry marsh — 1,600 acres, 7,280 bushels shipped to San Francisco, 200 pickers at fifty cents a bushel, and a company openly hoping to replace its Chinese crew with white labor.