CHAPTER LX.
THE COST OF HIGH LIVING.
On the 16th day of December, 1873, the last spike was driven to complete the Northern Pacific Railway between Kalama and Tacoma.
This was then, and is yet, considered a great event in the history of the Northwest country, not because of completing railroad connection between the two towns, but because of the binding together with bands of steel the two great arteries of traffic, the Columbia River and Puget Sound.
Kalama, situated on the right bank of the Columbia forty miles below Portland, was then simply a construction town of railroad laborers, and has remained as a village to this day. Tacoma, which then could boast of four hundred inhabitants—mill hands, terminal seekers and railroad laborers—has now fully one hundred thousand permanent inhabitants, engaged in the usual avocations of industry incident to civilized life.
On the 16th day of December, 1913, the Tacoma Commercial Club celebrated "The Fortieth Anniversary of Train Operation to Tacoma," in the form of a railroad "Jubilee Dinner." In consideration of my having been a passenger on that first train, and "possibly the only survivor of that passenger list", the writer received a cordial invitation to be the guest of the club, which was accepted. He occupied a chair at the banquet table, sat as a mute spectator, and listened to the speeches that followed the banquet, and saw the many devices arranged for entertaining the company.
It would appear unseemly for the writer, as a guest, to criticize his host, the Commercial Club, for the manner of his entertainment, particularly considering the cordiality of the invitation. "We hope that you can be here, but if you cannot there will be at least one vacant chair at the banquet table, and it will be held in memory of Ezra Meeker, the pioneer of the Puget Sound country", this following expressions of concern as to my health. So, whatever criticism may follow will be as a friend of a friend and not in a facetious spirit. Let us now consider the banquet, so intimately connected with the subject of the high cost of living, or perhaps in this case might I not better say, "cost of high living", or for what might be more appropriately known as the woeful waste cost of living. Covers were laid for 344 in the large banquet hall, and every seat was occupied. In addition a large number were fed in overflow, improvised dining halls, the participants coming into the main hall to hear the speeches after the feast was over. Seven courses came upon the board, including wine in profusion. Fully one-third of the viands of these seven courses was sent off the table and to the garbage cans, destined to soon reach the incinerator or sewers of the city, and later the deep sea waters of Puget Sound, save one item, the wine, all of which was consumed. As I sat and mused, to me it seemed a pity the wine did not follow the waste into the sea. The tables and hall were profusely decorated with flowers. In one corner of the hall soft strains of sweet music would issue from a band half hidden from view. Alternately with these, in a more central position, gifted singers would entertain the assemblage with appropriate songs.
In one angle of the room was a booth, "The Round House" of one of the transcontinental lines; at another point, "The Terminals", and so on through with the four transcontinental railroad lines centering in Tacoma, with "conductors" as ushers, dining and sleeping car porters as waiters, each appropriately decorated to point the line to which they belonged.
As I sat and mused between courses, it gradually dawned upon my mind that this was in fact as well as in name a "railroad jubilee dinner" and celebration, and not an assemblage to commemorate pioneer deeds as pioneer days; that the "Anniversary" date had been seized upon to attract the widest possible attendance to accomplish another purpose—that the object of the meeting was to obtain a hearing for a "square deal" for the railroads, in a word, to build up a public sentiment favoring the increase of freight rates. This fact became more manifest and more apparent as the program was unfolded in the introduction of five railroad magnates as the principal speakers of the evening, followed by the young governors of the States of Oregon and Washington, but not a pioneer was called or heard. In fact, less than half a dozen of the pioneers of forty years ago were present—a whole generation had passed in these eventful years since 1873.