The High Cost of Isolation

The mutuality of interest between the coast and western levels of the Territory has been so often written about that it has become all but worn out as a subject for newspaper articles. The mutuality exists, however, and in a totally different condition. We have little trade between the two sections, but it is carried on at enormous expense. It is not one-hundredth part what it would be were there direct communication. It cannot be otherwise as long as we have to depend upon present routes of travel. To go from here to Walla Walla, a straight distance of two hundred miles, it is made necessary to leave the Territory and go over a line four hundred miles long. To go to Spokane Falls, two hundred and fifty miles away, a trip of nearly six hundred miles is necessitated. We have a good deal from the people at Ellensburgh, and the bulk of what we buy invariably takes the long route around. This adds to the expense 20 per cent, and is a tax to that extent upon our beef, mutton, and horses. People here pay $4 a ton for coal, but when the Seattle firm has a customer there he has to pay more than three times as much. The very best description of wood can be bought in the timber here at a dollar and a half a cord, and delivered in town at three dollars. An inferior article in the towns there costs from six to fifteen dollars a cord. The wood here is rotting, and they want it so badly. Here is the coal and lime in quantity sufficient to supply the whole Pacific slope for a thousand years. They also want our fish and lumber, and we want their grain and fruit, their wool and hides. There can be no exchange, though, as long as the present impediments prevail.