country does not? We say, glibly, that there are too many towns for the population, and too large a part of the population in towns; therefore, let us place the people all on farms, each settler to work out his own salvation. The result would be a generation spent in lonely toil, and no market provided for the products of farming. Is not the modern way of letting capital do the work of development, of building up cities to furnish a thousand employments for the one of agriculture, and of furnishing buyers of the farm productions of the country at good prices, a better one? Quien sabe f
But, let us get back to Tacoma and her other tributary territory, indulging in some reminiscences by the way. At a meeting of the board of directors of the Northern Pacific Bailroad Company held September 10, 1873, Judge R. D. Rice, of Maine, vice-president, and Captain J. C. Ainsworth, of Portland, Oregon, managing director of the Pacific Coast, commissioners to examine the eastern shore line of Puget Sound, throughout its entire extent, for a suitable terminus, made a report, in accordance with which the company passed a resolution to locate and construct its main road to the southerly side of Commencement Bay, "and within the limits of the city of Tacoma," from which it would appear that the fact of Tacoma's existence had been already determined, as indeed it was in the month of June prior to this report. Some transactions in real estate had taken place previous to the failure of Jay Cooke & Co., and continued to take place in a doubting way, and without any excitement.
When the railroad had recovered from this failure, and was straining every nerve under Villard's management to make connection with Portland, and thence to reach the Sound by this branch and avoid the expenditure of many millions in crossing the Cascades, came the second—Yillard's—failure, ten years after the first. Public confidence was unsettled, not only by these financial difficulties, but by fears that the management would not, after all, cross the mountains, or, if it did. that it might make the terminus at Seattle. Thus fourteen years slipped away, during which the Tacoma Land Company laid out the first streets and made considerable improvements, C. B. Wright, of Philadelphia, being very active in directing these. Under his management the Hotel Tacoma was completed in 1884. He
