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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 8 |
| 1898 | 19 |
| 1899 | 1 |
28 stories matching thing
- The Mortgage Freeze of 1897
New state legislation intended to protect farmers from foreclosure has inadvertently choked off agricultural lending.
- A Deadly Mistake in the Wilds
A local man's near-fatal encounter with water hemlock serves as a grim warning about the importance of botanical knowledge in rural life.
- A Warehouse, a Baler and a Railroad Rate: Yakima's Bid to Hold the Wool Trade
W. L. Steinweg leases the old Chappell Cox warehouse, installs a wool baler, and talks the railroad into a $1-a-ton rate out of Kittitas County — the opening move in a plan to make North Yakima the range country's permanent wool market.
- A $10,000 Co-op With No Fruit in the Store
A Seattle farm reporter walks into the Tacoma offices of the Washington Fruit Produce Union to find both its manager and secretary conveniently 'out of town,' an empty warehouse, a treasurer who ran off with the funds — and hundreds of farmers who had just paid $5 apiece to join.
- The High Cost of Neglected Apiaries
A local beekeeping expert warns that failing to clear weeds from hive entrances is costing regional producers significant honey yields.
- Spokane Had Mining Fever, and the Men Selling the Stock Had the Only Sure Thing
A Yakima correspondent visits Spokane and finds a city where hotel clerks, newsboys and waiter girls are all buying mining shares — and where even Ezra Meeker has traded hops for a stock prospectus.
- War Paint Against California's Buggy Fruit
Whatcom County hires a fruit inspector and vows to turn back insect-infested California produce before it reaches Puget Sound — and the piece urges Everett and Snohomish County to muster for the fight.
- Milk Prices Jump as Condensed Milk Company Shakes Up Dairy Market
A new condensed milk plant has driven milk prices to their highest in years, delighting farmers in the White River Valley—but the company needs more milk before it can move to Kent.
- Counterfeit Yakima Potatoes on the Sound
A Tacoma paint dealer tells the valley's paper that Puget Sound merchants were passing off second-grade Western Washington spuds as Yakima's prized crop — and that in a full year he got the genuine article only three times.
- The Milk Inspector Spokane Loved to Hate
Dr. James Bullivant fined five Spokane dairymen for selling milk below standard. The dairymen said he was less interested in public health than in collecting half the fines.
- The Fruit Boom on Orcas Island
A local resident reports on the rapid agricultural expansion of the San Juan Islands, predicting a tenfold increase in fruit production.
- Dairymen Demand a Brand on Every Pound of Butter
Washington's creamery men move to outlaw rebranded Eastern butter and process butter sold as the real thing — and a leading dealer offers to help write the bill.
- The Wholesaler Tells the Growers the Truth: 'We Don't Love You'
Sixteen years in the Seattle commission trade and no patience left, R. Merchant tells a room of fruit growers that no middleman has ever cared about them — and that neat, uniform packing, not grievance, is the only thing that ever got a farmer paid.
- The Farmers' Grange Declares War on the Mortgage System
Washington's State Grange master lays out a platform against credit, monopolies and 'exorbitant per cent profits' — while insisting the order is not political.
- 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.
- The Mountains Closed: Stockmen Fight the Cascade Forest Reserve
Eastern Washington's cattle and sheep men warn that locking up the Cascades as a federal forest reserve would beggar every valley town — and train their anger on the Yakama Reservation boundary, which they want opened to their herds.
- 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 Weed That Beat Wheat Hay
A Cheney-area farmer's experiment with prickly lettuce convinced him the despised weed was better cattle feed than his best wheat and oat hay.
- Washington Apples Fight Back Against a New York Snub
A Seattle commission man rebuts a trade journal's claim that Northwest fruit can't match California's, citing 10,000 boxes of fancy apples already shipped east.
- The Night the Chickens Sang Backup: Spokane’s Poultry Show
Spokane’s annual poultry exhibition drew hundreds of birds, a towering silver trophy, and an orchestra the chickens refused to let finish alone.
- 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 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.
- 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.
- 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.