The Struggle for the Northern Pacific Rails

Last week we published intelligence of an amendment to the Northern Pacific Railroad bill in the House, offered by Luttrell to restore to pre-emption and homestead entry all lands north of Tacoma. Later we have dispatches to the effect that the House committee on the Pacific Railroad agreed to report the Senate bill to extend the time for the completion of the North Pacific Railroad eight years without amendment, except one that the company shall not be required to locate its route through Idaho, before July 4th, rejecting Luttrell’s proposition for restoring lands. This measure looks like recognition on the part of Congress of the fact that the extreme distress that prevails throughout the nation demands a renewal of the long-discarded policy of pushing the national enterprises of public improvement. This return to right reason is an omen of coming prosperity. It will furnish employment to starving workmen, will stimulate trade and manufacturer and will attract again the ebbing current of immigration. Whatever means good fortune to the country at large, means prosperity in a double degree to the western Territories, of which Washington is the most resourceful and most important. It means mischief to the settlers in one respect, that is in doubling the cost of their pre-emption, and halving the acreage of their homesteads. But we can stand that inconvenience if the company will build the road as they are in duty bound to do as an offset. The retention of the lands as withheld from the reach of the settler for which we have to say—speed its progress. The Northern Pacific Railroad when finished will make Puget Sound the great commercial entrepot of the continent, and the rival of San Francisco.