Available Manufacturing Sites.
A resume of Tacoma’s superior advantages for manufacturing would be incomplete without reference to its abundant supply of manufacturing sites. There are twelve square miles of tide and river flats immediately east of the city which, owing to a combination of circumstances, were until recently incapable of private ownership and occupation. At the south end or head of Commencement Bay there is a level plain traversed near its westerly side by the Puyallup River. The lands on the easterly side of the river were for many years set apart by the government as a part of the Puyallup Indian reservation, but recently these have been sold by order of the government. The King County line extended also to the Puyallup River and the tide and river flats at the head of the bay—most advantageously located for commercial and industrial purposes—being without their jurisdiction, were incapable of improvement by the city or Pierce County. But in 1901 the reservation lands were legally annexed to Pierce County, of which Tacoma is the county seat, and the occupation of this enormous area of flat lands adjacent to tidewater has just begun.
A substantial bridge has this year been erected by the city of Tacoma across the Puyallup River at a convenient point for access to the annexed lands from the manufacturing district which occupies the flats west of the Puyallup River. The federal government has made a complete survey of the harbor of Tacoma, the plans for the improvement of which contemplate the construction of a series of waterways extending from deep water in the bay a considerable distance to the south. The City Waterway, which is being dredged to a width of 550 feet and depths increasing as it approaches the bay from fifteen to thirty feet, under a contract awarded by the federal government in January, 1903, extends as far south as Twenty-third Street, or nearly twenty city blocks from the original harbor line. Miles of additional waterfront and wharves will thus be obtained at the head of the bay, exclusive of the natural shore line some ten miles in extent from Brown’s Point to Point Defiance. Railroads and steamships will have direct and immediate access to the very heart of this district. The acquisition and improvement by the construction of roads, bridges and waterways of 6,000 acres of land immediately adjacent to the city, make it possible for many more manufacturers to secure sites and utilize the limitless power resources of Tacoma, the great Industrial City of the Pacific Northwest.
Loading Lumber at Tacoma Mill Company’s Wharf.
Tacoma is now the leading manufacturing city of Washington and the Pacific Northwest. The industrial development of the city since 1900 has been phenomenal. According to the federal census there were in 1900 381 manufacturing establishments at Tacoma, whose aggregate invested capital was $8,146,691, of which there were 385 proprietors and in whose employ there were 293 salaried officials and clerks and 4,347 wage-earners. Of this total number of wage-earners in manufacturing and mechanical industries at Tacoma, 4,104 were men, while only 243 were women or children under the age of 16 years. The total value of the products, including custom work and repairing, of the 381 establishments at Tacoma for the year preceding the taking of the census was $12,029,497.
MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED NEW MILLS AND FACTORIES HAVE BEEN ADDED TO THE LIST OF TACOMA’S MANUFACTURING INDUSTRIES DURING THE FOUR YEARS THAT HAVE ELAPSED SINCE THE FEDERAL CENSUS WAS TAKEN. THAT IS AN AVERAGE OF MORE THAN TWO NEW FACTORIES EVERY MONTH. MANY OF THE OLDER ESTABLISHMENTS HAVE DOUBLED OR TREBLED THEIR CAPACITY DURING THE SAME PERIOD.
No complete summary of the operations of Tacoma’s manufacturing establishments can be presented for comparison with the census report of 1900. But from written reports submitted to the Tacoma Daily News by some of the leading manufacturing concerns in Tacoma, it appears that during the calendar year 1903, one hundred and thirty-five representative manufacturers in the city employed an average of 6,796 wage-earners during the year, while the value of the finished product of these establishments alone for the same year was $28,932,295, and the cost of permanent improvements or additions to the plants during the year was $1,129,550. In other words, 135 out of 500 to 600 establishments that would now be classified by the census as manufacturing concerns in this city employed 2,349 more wage-earners in 1903 than were employed by a total of 389 establishments during the census year, while the value of the output of these 135 establishments in 1903 was nearly two and one-half times as great as the total value of the product of 389 establishments in 1900.