A Car Famine at the Shingle Mills
A shortage of freight cars threatens to ruin small shingle manufacturers across the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern line.
The local officials of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad Company sent to the Northern Pacific officials at Tacoma an urgent telegraphic request for relief from the car famine which at present is having so disastrous an effect on the shingle trade. Superintendent Newman Kline, of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern road, said yesterday that he understood the situation thoroughly and was doing all in his power to secure more cars. He feels that if immediate relief is not granted the delay will mean comparative ruin for a large number of the smaller shingle manufacturers, and that this in turn means great loss to the wholesale merchants of this city, who have been carrying these men and giving them a liberal credit. M. C. Kimberley, general, and F. W. Dickinson, assistant superintendent, will be in Seattle today for the purpose of holding a consultation with Mr. Kline, the local superintendent, and to see if some quick arrangement may not be effected by which the large stock of shingles now piled up all along the line of the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern road may be moved.
“If immediate relief is not granted the delay will mean comparative ruin for a large number of the smaller shingle manufacturers.”
The shingle mills were the lifeblood of Seattle’s early economy, and their vulnerability to railroad logistics mirrors today’s supply chain anxieties. Just as those mills relied on credit from wholesalers, modern small businesses still struggle under the shadow of larger corporate infrastructure.
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