The Bankrupt Giant and the Tacoma Land Ring

The Intelligencer, in the interest of the 'Tacoma Land Ring,' makes an important announcement: Mr. Wilkeson, son of the Secretary of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company, has received a telegram from his father to the effect that as soon as the weather will permit, the work of extending the Puyallup branch across the mountains will be commenced and contracts let for the construction of forty miles this year. Whoever read the grandiloquent circulars of Jay Cooke & Co. as agents for the sale of N.P. bonds, or the gushing descriptions of the Puget Sound country by the same author, will make due allowances for the ardent temperament of the elder Sam, and understand why he should deem his news of such urgent importance as to demand the use and expense of the telegraph to transmit it to Samuel the younger in such hot haste. Any medium of communication less sensational than a telegram could not have had the designed effect. Thousands of unsuspecting persons were inveigled into the purchase of N.P. railroad bonds by like devices. There is no doubt the directors of the Northern Pacific have in view the construction of their branch road if found practicable, to take in their coal road. That fact has not yet been ascertained. If they have determined to build the branch road from Tacoma any way, and have the means to do it, Tacoma cannot excel Seattle in rejoicing over the much-to-be-desired consummation of hopes long deferred. The only route the practicability of which has been demonstrated is within ten miles of Seattle, to which point we have a railroad now in operation. After that, Seattle need fear no rivalry for commercial supremacy upon this upper coast.