LABOR.
Good supply of labor, but more wanted.Under this head I will merely say that, though the laboring population of Washington Territory is very mixed and has not the settled character of labor in the old States, and though many more laborers could find employment, there does not seem to be any special deficiency of this class, and the high wages that are paid will, no doubt, bring in more workmen as they are wanted.
Wages.Governor Squire, in his report for 1885, page 41, gives quite a detailed list of wages, which shows that the rates are at least fifty per cent. higher than in the Middle States, and double what is paid in the Southern Atlantic States. Farm laborers get from $25 to $30 a month and board. Loggers pay from $35 to $40 per month to common hands, and $65 to $70 to teamsters. Skilled labor receives high wages, and railway contractors sometimes have to pay $2 to $2.50 per day for common hands. Servant girls are scarce, and wanted, at $15 a month and board. Hotel servants get from $20 to $25 a month. Chinamen are extensively employed for family servants. Many of them are tolerable cooks, and get $30 a month and board. Indians are working more than formerly. The men "slash" the forests, pick hops, etc. Squaws always were industrious—had to be! The Sandwich Islands, as well as China and Japan, furnish some laborers. The employers are favorable to this class of immigrants, whilst the white laborers are bitterly opposed to them. Canada will continue to employ cheap Chinese labor, and thus place our Pacific States at a disadvantage, if the present policy of excluding Chinese labor is continued.
THE GEOLOGY OF WASHINGTON
TERRITORY.
HISTORICAL AND STRUCTURAL.
I shall not say much about the historical geology of Washington Territory, because it contains some problems which have never been adequately studied, and which I had no opportunity to investigate. It is to be hoped that the regular work of the Government Survey may soon be extended to this important region. Hitherto it has been neglected. A few able geologists such as Joseph Le Conte, Pumpelly, Newberry, Bailey Willis, and some others, have made visits to the country on special errands; but except the treatise of Bailey Willis in Vol. XV. of the Census Reports, and some brief allusions to the country in systematic works on general geology, I had nothing to guide me as to the structure of the country, or the age of its deposits. For all practical purposes, however, I had no difficulty in understanding the work I had to do.
All agree that the country west of the Rocky Mountains proper, and including nearly all of California, Oregon, and Washington Territory,The Western Coast regions younger than the Rocky Mountains and Appalachians. is geologically younger than the main range, and younger than the Appalachian country. At the close of the carboniferous period proper, the Rocky Mountain range constituted a separate continent, with a sea covering what is now the main Mississippi Valley, including the wide plains immediately east of the Rocky Mountains, and connecting, probably, with the polar sea, whilst the Pacific Ocean washed the western edge of this Rocky Mountain continent; so that until after that period there were no Wahsatch and Uintah mountains, no Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range, no Coast Range, and, of course, none of the intervening country. It is quite possible, however, that there was a third continent lying west of the present continentAn outlying Continent. in what is now ocean, from whose waste the sediments were derived which were afterwards elevated and became the land now included in the three States bordering the Pacific, whilst the mother continent, which furnished the sediments, sank beneath the ocean. If there were such an outlying continent, additional force is given to the views of Dr. George F. Becker, endorsed by Dr. C. A. White, and to some extent anticipated by Prof. J. D. Whitney, which render it probable on other grounds that the two great lines of mountains, viz., the Sierra Nevada and Cascade Range and the Coast Range, began their upward movement simultaneously during the early ages of the Juro-Trias.The rise of the West Coast. The rise of these mountain lines was gradual and marked by reverse movements, whereby, after appearing above the surface, they sank and rose alternately, receiving fresh sediments, which, especially in the Washington Territory region and part of Oregon and California, when above water, became clothed with an enormous vegetation which was packed into coal-beds, layer after layer. In the lapse of time these all came above the surface. The mountains grew higher and higher, attended by intense heat in the axes of the ranges, and at different periods, down almost to the present, exhibiting volcanic action on an enormous scale. At other periods, a large portion of the region was visited by ice-floods, succeeded by water-floods, which top-dressed great areas with a mingled deposit of gravel, sand and mud, and carried away vast blocks of the rocky substance of the country, and cut deep channels in all the highlands.
As Washington Territory is now presented to us, it exhibits a scene of mountains, lowlands, and elevated plateaus, which are full of interest and variety. Some general account of its topography has already been given.