Railroad Tycoon Predicts Pacific Coast Steel Boom
James J. Hill, president of the Great Northern Railroad, outlines the regional economic outlook and argues that the West's raw materials will soon fuel a local industrial revolution.
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President J. J. Hill of the Great Northern Railroad, in an interview, said: 'The lumber business of the North Pacific has been depressed on account of the falling off in the export trade by ocean to South America, Australia and other places. It is being replaced by rail shipments to the East. The single item of the shipment of cedar shingles amounts to 100 carloads a day. The only question is the furnishing of cars. The agricultural business of the Palouse country has suffered because of the heavy rains during the harvest, which injured the quality of the wheat. The mining business is picking up. In Washington and Idaho the greater attention to gold prospecting is resulting in the opening of new gold fields... This section of the country will recover from the hard times more quickly than the section east of Chicago, because it has fewer manufactures. It produces things the people must have for food, shelter and for paying their way... I look for an important new development on the Pacific coast very soon. The Puget Sound contains large deposits of fine ore and good coking coal, which are beginning to attract attention. It will be but a short time before the Pacific coast will be supplied with the best iron and steel as cheaply as elsewhere.'
“This section of the country will recover from the hard times more quickly than the section east of Chicago, because it has fewer manufactures.”
James J. Hill was a key architect of the Pacific Northwest’s integration into the global economy, framing the region as a resource colony for the East. Today, the dream of steel production in the Puget Sound remains a distant echo, replaced by a tech and service-based economy that continues to grapple with the boom-and-bust cycles Hill described.
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