The Lumber Industry's Long Wait for the Iron Horse

Times are still rather slow in the lumber line on Puget Sound, with, however, an upward and brightening tendency. Like all new countries, this section must needs depend, until its magnificent resources are developed, upon investment of Eastern capital or the building up of earlier investments. Money from the East is slow of arrival, and until it does come, the development of the resources will be rather slow. A new mine, a new town or a new factory creates a demand for lumber and other necessaries, and when building goes on, brisk trade is sure to follow. The lumbermen of Washington are in a peculiar shape; with a cutting capacity of 1,250,000,000 feet yearly, they have but foreign shipments and a strictly local demand to depend upon. Consequently, when times are hard, through various causes, the local demand is very small indeed, and as there is not demand enough from foreign ports to keep all mills busy, it is rather hard scratching for many to make both ends meet. This condition has prevailed in Western Washington for the past eighteen months among the fir manufacturers and has led to an active search for Eastern trade. The brightening up period is set for 1898, when the Great Northern reaches the Sound. Towns, station houses, bridges, section houses, and water tanks will have to be erected, and the lumber will come from Western Washington. The boom now experienced in Spokane is the result of the Great Northern coming. That boom is due in the Sound region next year, and the lumbermen first of all will welcome it.