The True Cost of a 'Terminus'

While Tacoma has long suffered, and she still suffers, from the discriminations of the Northern Pacific railroad, we have never doubted that in the long run she would be better off without the 'terminus' than with it. Tacoma is the terminus, not because the Northern Pacific managers have any love for the town or the people in it, but because they hope to make money out of it. They monopolize pretty much every valuable municipal privilege and that they intend to continue to do so is illustrated almost every week by new demands upon the corporation. They have just secured a monopoly of street car privileges for fifty years. It costs something, in the long run to be a 'terminus,' as Tacoma is beginning to find out. With the water works, gas services, electric light plant and all the water front of the city in the hands of the Northern Pacific, citizens who have been deluding themselves with the idea that they had some interest in the place are beginning to rub their eyes and look about them. The time will come when the people of Tacoma will regret bitterly the relations which bind them hand and foot to the Northern Pacific; indeed the time does not now seem very far off.