Tacoma Tries to Sell Itself to a Visiting New Yorker

The extract from Mr. Charles S. Smith's interview with a New York Tribune reporter, printed in the Ledger yesterday, must have surprised Tacoma people—and Seattle people as well. Mr. Smith was here with the Carnegie party, and spent half a day in Seattle and the other half in Tacoma. He was impressed with both towns, and while he can hardly say enough about Tacoma as a residence city, he thinks Seattle has the advantage from a business point of view.

Mr. Smith evidently got his impressions of both cities from the buildings. He doubtless received some information from people who talked to him in both cities, but none of it seems to have impressed him except the fact that Seattle is soon to have four transcontinental railways reaching to its shores. It would have puzzled Mr. Smith, no doubt, to name these four roads at the time he was interviewed, and it will perhaps surprise him yet to learn that two of them will become transcontinental when their length is increased by about 3,000 miles. Tacoma also has a couple of embryo transcontinental roads of the same sort, the Tacoma Puyallup and the Hart road, but nobody in Tacoma yet seems to think of representing them to strangers either as actual or prospective trunk lines. We also have the Puget Sound Shore line, the Tacoma, Olympia & Grays Harbor, and the Tacoma Lake Park, not to mention the Peninsular Railway and Navigation lines, with all of which we might entertain the stranger if we would make the most of our opportunities.

While Mr. Smith noted the new business blocks in Seattle—all of which have been erected since the fire, and of which he takes pains to say there are already more than are needed—and of the fine homes in Tacoma, he says nothing of our splendid wheat trade. As president of the New York produce exchange this ought to have impressed him, if it was called to his attention. He thinks our lumber interests have great possibilities, though not just now in a very flourishing condition. He does not seem to have observed our coal business, the ships in our harbor, or the fact that our railroad connections are real while Seattle's are prospective. Perhaps he was not told what our bank clearings showed last year, or what our wholesale and manufacturing business amounted to. The smelter more than likely escaped his observation, and the dry dock, of course, he did not see.

We evidently have much to learn about entertaining our visitors. We have too long been content to tell them generally of what we actually have. Latterly we have even been neglecting this to a great extent. They like to hear what is going to be, and it is clear that some who are generally pretty wide awake are impressed by these things quite as much as by the things that really are. There is no end of material of this kind, and no opportunity ought to be lost to bring it to the attention of men like Mr. Smith who enjoy the best of advantages for making use of it to our benefit.