Spokane's Board of Trade Fights to Save the Northern Pacific Land Grant

Last Saturday evening a large number of the winners at our Board of Trade met in Cannon's Hall for the purpose of taking formal action in regard to the bills now before Congress declaring the land grants of the Northern Pacific road forfeited, on the whimsical plea that the road was not completed within the time specified. It is easily to be seen by all fair-minded people that the proposition would entail very serious hardship upon Washington Territory, a section of country that is now attracting particular attention throughout the entire Union, and which is on the very eve of entering that prosperity that is destined to lift her up to the proud eminence of one of the very first among the sisterhood of States. If the bill to which our people take exception should become a law it would be impossible to enumerate the misfortune that it would be to the Territory.

We are not advocating this measure on behalf of a corporation, nor are we wearing the collar of any railroad in existence, but write as we do feeling that the best interests of the whole people are at stake in this issue.

The following is the memorial adopted by our Board of Trade, and it speaks for itself, in language more eloquent than any of our command:

To the Honorable Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled:

Your Memorialist, the Board of Trade of the City of Spokane Falls, Washington Territory, respectfully represents to your Honorable body:

That the permanent prosperity of the Territory of Washington, and the rapid development of its marvelous resources, depends largely upon the early completion of the Northern Pacific Railway to its terminus upon Puget Sound. That such part of the road as still remains uncompleted is largely through difficult mountain country, with nine months of snow, and none of which can be developed until the railroad is complete. That even with the existing land grant, its construction will be a triumph of financial genius, but without it, almost an impossibility. That without such a road to connect the eastern and western districts of Washington Territory, the inhabitants thereof are more effectually deprived of all direct intercourse than they would be if the Atlantic Ocean rolled between. We further represent that our resources are now tapped by, and our wealth goes to enrich neighboring cities and states, whose only interest in our prosperity is the profits they make resultant thereby.

We also respectfully represent that the Northern Pacific Railway, the great artery of commerce for the North part of the United States, has been built to connection with tide water only after repeated efforts, and under peculiar hardships, difficulties and financial disasters such as have not beset any other enterprise of a similar nature. The great money panic of 1873, which wrought such havoc and ruin, prostrated the men who were engaged in building this road; and the men who again in 1878 put their shoulders to the wheel have been crushed under the weight; instead of having enriched themselves with the spoils of the land grant, they have sacrificed their private fortunes to sustain the enterprise.

This road has also practically been built without other Government aid than its grant of lands. It has opened up to settlement the richest agricultural and mineral districts in the United States, and has quadrupled the values all along its line. It has tapped the commerce of the Orient, but the last link of the chain which will bind the East and West together has not yet been forged; until that is done, the inexhaustible resources of America's great inland sea — Puget Sound — must necessarily lie dormant, and that link, extending through the barrier of the Cascade Mountains, cannot for many years be completed if the land grant is withdrawn.

This road over the rugged mountains is a vital necessity for the development of the vast potential commerce of the Puget Sound region, and the unlimited agricultural and mineral resources of Eastern and Middle Washington. We earnestly insist that, considering the difficulties which they have encountered, the projectors of the Northern Pacific Railway have acted in better faith to the Government and the people than the promoters of any other transcontinental line; they have grown poor, while the builders of the Central, Union and Southern Pacific roads have grown rich. While they were pouring their money like water to build the road and achieve that which brings prosperity to millions, all including the wealth of the land grant has been swallowed up in the attempt.