A Warehouse, a Baler and a Railroad Rate: Yakima's Bid to Hold the Wool Trade
W. L. Steinweg leases the old Chappell Cox warehouse, installs a wool baler, and talks the railroad into a $1-a-ton rate out of Kittitas County — the opening move in a plan to make North Yakima the range country's permanent wool market.
W. L. Steinweg has arranged a nucleus for holding the wool trade at North Yakima by leasing the old Chappell Cox warehouse and arranging to put in a baler. Considerable wool has already been taken, and a $1 per ton rate from Kittitas county has been granted by the railroad in order to enable wool men in that county to take advantage of the arrangement. The lease of the property contains a purchase clause, and the intention is to organize a stock company a little later on, when the busy season is past, and so make the venture a permanent thing. — Yakima Herald.
“Considerable wool has already been taken, and a $1 per ton rate from Kittitas county has been granted by the railroad in order to enable wool men in that county to take advantage of the arrangement.”
Yakima's economy was built on moving other people's commodities — wool, hops, apples, wheat — through warehouses strung along the rails, and the pitch was always the same: shave the freight rate and the growers will follow. Steinweg's lease-with-an-option and promised stock company is the 1906 version of a supply-chain incentive package. The valley is still arguing about rail service, cold storage and how much of the agricultural dollar can be kept close to home.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.