The Iron Road and the Sea

That the Inter-State Commerce law will have the effect of raising through freight rates from the East to the Pacific coast, temporarily at least, considerably above what they have been in recent years, nobody doubts. Seattle has nothing to fear from the operation of the law. Freight rates may go as high as the railroads choose to make them, and it will occasion no interruption of business here. We have always the ocean at our doors, and no laws, no regulations, no combinations, can raise ocean freights for any length of time above their normal level. As soon as railroad freights become so high that the wholesale merchant will find it to his interest to import his goods by water, the old procession of steam and sailing vessels around Cape Horn will be resumed. The Seattle merchant can afford to have all his staple goods brought from New York by this route at a rate much less than he has been paying to the railroads. Goods which must be received with more dispatch can come by the Pacific Mail Company’s line across the Isthmus of Panama, and the lighter goods can come across the continent by rail as at present. Business would soon adapt itself to this change. Another probable effect would be the fostering and building up of manufacturing industries on the Pacific Coast. High freights would be to our manufacturers in the nature of a protective tariff. Seattle has nothing to fear from the operation of the law.