The Great Northern Is Coming as Fast as Men and Money Can Push It
A contractor's progress report puts track at the Columbia by October—if enough workers can be found.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
E. H. Beckler, chief engineer of the Great Northern Railroad, and D. C. Shepard, of Shepard, Henry & Co., the contractors, arrived in the city on Sunday night, having come over the line across the mountains. Mr. Beckler went over to Tacoma yesterday afternoon and Mr. Shepard went to Spokane, whence he will go to the end of the Great Northern line west. Mr. Shepard said:
"The road is coming as fast as men and money can push it, and that is all that can be said. No one has any idea when it will reach the Coast. Track is laid ninety miles out of Spokane, and the line is graded ninety miles further, or to the Columbia River, which will be reached with track about October 1. Tracklaying is going on at the rate of about four miles a day, but that is in the prairie country. When we reach the mountains that rate cannot be kept up. The first trouble is a scarcity of men. If it were not for that the line would be built faster."
Mr. Shepard takes no stock in the alleged combine between the Great Northern and Reading systems, and pronounced the rumor telegraphed from Philadelphia "all rot." He said:
"I do not know any better, but there's no sense in it. The Great Northern, through its connections at West Superior and St. Paul, now has a dozen lines to the Atlantic coast, and if this alleged combine were made, it would only have [unclear]."
“The road is coming as fast as men and money can push it, and that is all that can be said.”
The Great Northern's westward push was a nation-building project built by a mobile and often scarce labor force; contractors measured progress in miles per day. The complaint about a shortage of men still echoes in Washington's construction and agricultural labor debates.
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