Spokane Was Ready to Rotten-Egg Jim Hill
The Great Northern's freight rates left Spokane merchants bitter enough to organize, sue, and threaten the railroad baron with produce.
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.
The Tacoma Ledger says: John H. Stone, a well-known citizen of Spokane, passed through the city yesterday on his return to Olympia. Regarding the feeling with which the citizens of Spokane regard the freight rates lately issued by the Great Northern he said: 'People of Spokane feel very bitter towards Jim Hill. Spokane merchants are far more friendly to the Northern Pacific now than they are to the Great Northern; the Northern Pacific has never made Spokane any promises, and the head of the Great Northern did, therein the difference lies. Both have treated Spokane the same. The merchants of Spokane recently combined to enforce the interstate commerce rates and protect themselves against high railroad tariffs. They have already brought legal action against the Union Pacific to make it accept the interstate commerce decision. Judge George Turner, whom the merchants have engaged as counsel, said yesterday at Olympia that if Jim Hill was to walk down Riverside avenue the people of Spokane would undoubtedly rotten egg him.'
“If Jim Hill was to walk down Riverside avenue the people of Spokane would undoubtedly rotten egg him.”
Freight rates were the algorithms of the 1890s: they decided which towns thrived and which withered, and the anger at distant corporate decisions is recognizable in every modern fight over shipping costs, monopolies, and who gets to set the price. The rotten-egg threat is a reminder that infrastructure politics has always been personal.
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