The Silent Delegate: Why Washington Territory Is Falling Behind

Delegate Voorhees apparently thinks that he secured sufficient notoriety during the first session of the Forty-ninth Congress and is now willing to rest upon his achievements. It was necessary for him to make himself heard sufficiently during his first session to impress the people of Washington Territory with a due sense of his grievances, and thereby to secure a re-election, but with that accomplished, his efforts relaxed, and he has since allowed matters to drift pretty much as they would. The most prominent and active of the Territorial Delegates during the present session has undoubtedly been Delegate Toole, of Montana. He has managed to command more attention than all of the other delegates combined. He has watched the interests of his territory closely and has lost no opportunity to advance them and to keep before the country Montana’s claims to admission into the Union. The result has been that Montana, with a population not nearly so large as that of Washington, has received a greater share of attention from the public press; its claims to admission have been discussed where those of Washington have not been heard of, and its development has advanced more rapidly than ever before. Capital has been poured into Montana most lavishly within the past few months, and the indication is that during the coming summer the territory will witness such a degree of prosperity as it has never before known. Delegate Voorhees, like Delegate Toole, is a member of the predominant party in the House of Representatives. He, moreover, represents an older and more populous territory than that represented by Mr. Toole, and there is apparently no reason for his failure to keep abreast of the Montana representative.