The Puget Sound Printing Company is an institution of Tacoma.
The most conspicuous public buildings in Tacoma are the Northern Pacific Headquarters, the Hotel Tacoma, Hotel Rochester, Tacoma Theatre, Fannie Paddock Hospital (new), Annie Wright Seminary, St. Luke's Church, New Presbyterian Church, Swedish Lutheran Church, the Germania Hall, and Chamber of Commerce. But just at this day and hour the Tacoma Land Company have under consideration the plans for a new hotel to surpass the "Tacoma," and to cost half a million. They are also looking for the source of a future water-supply, the result of which will be something fine in the way of waterworks. Every morning's paper tell us of some projected improvement involving a great expenditure of money.
All this is nothing when compared with—let us say Chicago; but it is pretty well for Tacoma, whose real growth began four years ago. The money to do these things, we suggest, was drawn from the East. Yes, from the Eastern United States largely, but also from the Orient, from Great Britain, from South America, and from nearer home.
Take an example of the introduction of capital from St. Paul. The St. Paul and Tacoma Lumber Company purchased from the land department of the Northern Pacific Railroad Company a tract of timbered land comprising the odd sections in fourteen townships lying southeast of Tacoma and south of Wilkeson and Orting in the Puyallup Yalley, comprising eighty thousand acres covered with a heavy growth of fir, cedar, and spruce, estimated to amount to three billion feet. One of the conditions of the sale to the St. Paul and Tacoma Lumber Company of this immense tract of valuable timber was the construction by them of a railroad of standard gauge and equipment from the town of Orting, on the line of the Northern Pacific, in a southerly course to the Nisqually River, and thence eastward into the coal fields of the Cascade Mountains, to serve the double purpose of bringing out timber and coal and opening up the country to settlement. The St. Paul company also bound itself to cut a certain amount of timber per year on these lands, which should be shipped to Tacoma, where they were to build mills with a capacity of one hundred
