228 HISTORY OF THE GRANGE MOVEMENT; OR, 



may be situated for shipping, has, for the time being, 

 nothing in the shape of industrial establishments except 

 a few embryo collieries, as yet insignificant, and some 

 important saw-mills, which procure their raw material 

 by water, and whose selling markets are not on Ameri- 

 can soil but abroad, requiring ships to export their 

 product, while Duluth, a town of about 4000 inhabi- 

 tants, is still in embryo, so that it is hard to tell what 

 traffic it may afford hereafter. 



" 20. The Asiatic through trade, so far as it affects 

 the existing Pacific lines, and the importance of which 

 must not be too highly estimated, since it consists of 

 two articles only, tea and silk, will only be attracted 

 with difficulty to the Northern Pacific road, because, on 

 the one hand, until the branch line provided for in the 

 charter is completed, which will reduce the distance 

 from Puget Sound to Duluth from 2000 miles on the 

 main line to 1775 miles on the branch line, the distance 

 on the existing Pacific lines is about equal to that of 

 the Northern Pacific, which offers no shortening of the 

 journey by land, and because, on the other hand, the 

 commercial relations between New York and Chicago 

 and San Francisco are so closely tied that the removal 

 of the agency of the San Francisco houses concerned in 

 this commerce can hardly be thought of. 



" 21. After this exposition, though I readily acknow- 

 ledge that the Northern Pacific road will come in for 

 something at the opening for instance, the important 

 consignments to supply the military forts with provis- 

 ions, the transport of provisions for the Hudson's Bay 

 Company, the products of the mines of Montana, Idaho, 

 and Washington, insignificant at present I must in- 

 cline to the opinion that after the completion of the 



