We reduced our rates to one cent a mile. The other roads followed suit, supposing it possible for them to force us to terms.
The Legislative Council thereupon placed the fare at one dollar for the through trip from any point along the line to Seattle and one cent per mile for any distance less than one hundred miles. This was continued for two years without any change and the travel on the road was enormous and profitable at that price.
Freight rates were also reduced. The result of this road as to the manufactures of Idaho was to give them a “boom.”
Our woolen goods were especially salable. We had over four million sheep in Idaho and our woolen mills were consuming all the wool yield and that of Washington, Oregon and Montana. These goods were of superior quality and we were able to sell them cheaper than English manufacturers could without a tariff.
Two years before our road was completed to Chicago, after the last spike was driven at Seattle, we began the construction in that city of three large buildings costing one million dollars each.
These were of the most magnificent character and were equal to anything which in the competitive system would have compelled us to spend four or five million each. The reason was that we furnished the stone, slate, marble, lime and all building material from Idaho and performed all the work with our own Co-opolitan labor. We also transported men and material on our railroad.
One of these buildings was a co-operative store, another a co-operative hotel and a third a Palace of Amusements. This supplied Seattle with all needed in the way of clothing, food, hotel entertainment or accommodation and amusement or recreation, and constituted that combination by which we had successfully defeated all industrial or competitive opposition in Idaho.
The Washington Co-operative Association had arranged with us that we should be allowed Seattle as our seaport town, and we proceeded to establish a steamship line with China and Japan and arranged for other lines to countries bordering on the Pacific Ocean. This we had no difficulty in doing, as we had gold and silver in large quantities, taken from our mines or won from competitors, with which to deal with the barbarous people who use them.
As for Seattle, it had long been inclined to co-operation. Its business men and citizens had been for years struggling against every conceivable disadvantage and were completely at the mercy of trusts and combinations of the most unconscionable character. They had been approaching closer and closer to bankruptcy day by day until our “Three Brothers,” as they called the hotel, department store and amusement hall, received them into their fraternal arms.
Since Seattle became a co-operative city it has grown to be the great Pacific seaport of the co-operative world. Its widened avenues, its magnificent parks, its comfortable cottages, its great wharves and piers, its forest of masts, its magnificent Industrial Army, its schools and institutions of learning all bespeak a prosperity which is the pride of her citizens. And this pride is all the more excusable because the Seattle of to-day is the property of all her citizens and not the property of a few.