The Waterfront Teeming with Global Trade

A visit to the warehouses and wharves along the city front will give the seeker after information concerning the commerce centering at this point a clearer insight into its magnitude and a better idea of its multifarious characteristics than any description which can be written. The wharves are cambered and the warehouses literally overflowing with importations of every class, character and value. Steamers and sailing vessels were discharging cargoes as varied as the places whence they came, aggregating thousands of tons. Goods included sweet potatoes, watermelons, teas from Japan, coffee from the East Indies, spices from far Cathay, beer from St. Louis and California, coal from England, and tons of steel, piping, plate glass, organs, and pianos. There is no use in recapitulating; on the wharves yesterday there lay, at a low estimate, goods worth $100,000. If there is any lesson to be drawn from this scene of activity, other than the fact that Seattle stops not in her onward march toward commercial supremacy, it is that we import too much and produce and manufacture too little. We should not be forced to import food while around us stretch out the most productive valleys and hillsides, nor send abroad for half of the manufactured articles above enumerated while raw material blocks the way on every hand.