USA > Washington > Spokane County > Spokane > History of the city of Spokane and Spokane County, Washington : from its earliest settlement to the present time, Volume I > Part 71
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"George Rusk was the second man put on the police force and he joined in 1885. He was a good officer. I remember when he was killed. Mr. Rusk came down to the wooden calaboose which stood where the Auditorium now stands. A drunken Indian was locked up and other Indians were chopping down the jail. Rusk told them to wait and he would go and get the keys. He came back with help and threw the choppers into jail. A week later Rusk got a vacation and was killed by Indians at Deadman Creek, nine miles north of town. I was one of those who found the body a week later. There were seventeen in the party. George Crane. the shoe man, being one. Later with the aid of Indian Jim, I found the two Indians who had done the killing, and they were convicted and sent to Walla Walla for twenty years.
"My next important arrest was that of Jack Conover, who killed a man when the first 5-cent beer hall was opened in Spokane. The hall stood on Howard street between Main avenue and Front avenue. Conover killed an innocent carpenter in a wanton and cruel manner on the opening night. I trailed him ten miles up Hang- man Creek to his cabin. and when the door was opened he had me covered with his gun. He stuck me up for about twenty minutes before I talked him into surrender- ing. Waterhouse was coroner and lived at Deep Creek. When I arrived with the coroner the next day, the dead man still lay in the saloon. When I arrived with the prisoner, the people formed a plan to lynch him, but I got him into the calaboose and away from the crowd; then I whisked him to the county jail at Cheney, then the county seat. Conover broke jail or dug his way out and I never heard of him until about a year ago, when a friend told me in Nome that he was running as con- ductor on a passenger train out of Denver.
"The oddest game I was ever up against was in Peaceful Valley in 1888. An Indian was down there and was reported to be a bad man. When I met him he got the drop on me with a cavalry carbine at forty paces. I dropped to the ground and he missed me. He got in three more shots at me and in the meantime I got my six shooter in operation. He became rattled after the first shot. The Indians buried him next day. Later we learned that he had killed two prospectors and fatally injured a third on the Idaho line the preceding day. and thought I was after him for that offiense.
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"In the early days there were always a few blood-eurdling four-flushers in town. I remember one fellow who called himself 'Wild Bill.' He blew into town with a mammoth six shooter strapped to his person and carrying a bowie-knife in his boot. I heard a lot of him and did not know but that he would cause me some trouble. Wild Bill carried things with a free hand and entered a saloon that stands where the Grand hotel now stands. He was running the house with the aid of a gun; was doing as he pleased. I went in and told him he was under arrest. Wild Bill eried and begged me not to shoot him.
"The last important Indian arrest I made was that of a buck who had assaulted a white woman on a lonely road west of the city. The Indian stuck Lane Gilliam up with a six shooter. After I had landed him in the county jail at Cheney, the citizens broke into the jail and lynched him. Other Indians blamed me for the lynching, and for two or three years I was warned that these Indians were watch- ing for a chance to kill me."
Mr. Warren was elected chief of police in 1887, again in 1888 and 1889. When the office of chief of police became appointive, he was appointed by Mayor Olmsted. In 1900 he went to Nome and has since been a resident of Alaska.
Vol. 1-38
CHAPTER LXXV
SPOKANE'S LONG FIGHT FOR JUST FREIGHT RATES
RATES ADVANCED 100 PER CENT IN 1887-A SHARP PROTEST-FIRST SUIT BY BOARD OF TRADE IN 1889-SHIPPERS DIVIDED IN 1890-INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION HERE IN 1891-ADVENT OF JAMES J. HILL-GIVEN FREE RIGHT OF WAY-INDIGNA- TION OVER BROKEN PROMISES-COMMISSION ORDERS REDUCTION IN CLASS RATES- RAILROADS IGNORE THE ORDER-COURTS HOLD COMMISSION CAN NOT MAKE RATES- MYSTERIOUS DISAPPEARANCE OF HILL'S TARIFF SHEETS-1. W. DOLAND AND OTHER SHIPPERS GO BEFORE JUDGE HANFORD-LORENZO SAWYER KNOCKS THEM OUT-IN- DIGNANT SHIPPERS ORGANIZE BOYCOTT-RAILROADS GRANT CONCESSIONS-TIEPBURN LAW PASSED-SPOKANE RENEWS FIGHT BEFORE COMMISSION-TENTATIVE DECISION IN 1909-FULLER DECISION IN 1910-COMPLETE DECISION IN 1911-HOW SPO- KANE CELEBRATED.
Justice is itself the great standing poliey of civil society; and any eminent de- parture from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all .- Burke.
Whoever fights, whoever falls, Justice conquers evermore .- Emerson.
D ISCUSSING the injustice of diseriminating rates, the writer of this vol- ume said in an editorial article in the morning Review of December 27, 1890, "If Spokane were given her rights, if those things which are Cae- sar's were rendered unto Caesar, this city would become the greatest commercial center in the state of Washington. The way to the problem of our future growth lies in recognition of this important faet. When Judge Deady of Portland decided that railroads might charge more for short than long hauls of merchandise, when the long hauls entered into water competition, he struck a most effective blow at the growth of this eity. If the other interpretation had been taken, if the merchants of this city eould obtain the same rates that are obtained by merchants five hundred miles farther from the centers of shipment, Spokane would be the Seattle of the State. People often declare that we want manufactories above all else. That is hardly correct; we want equitable freight rates. Given that, the factories will come along of their own volition.
"Repeatedly the Review has pointed out that the claims of this city will have to be recognized, that the interests of the city and railroads are identical, and that in discriminating against Spokane in order to enter into ruinous competition with
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water shipments, they are cutting down their own earnings. As matters now stand. there is lamentable waste of energy. While Spokane sits four hundred miles nearer the manufacturing and commercial centers of the East, and from two hundred to four hundred miles nearer the consumer, and has an admirable railroad system, the transcontinental lines have pursued a false poliey of hauling freight through to the sea-port .and then hauling it back to the consumer, twice climbing one of the world's great mountain ranges. Much of this freight passes through Spokane before it can reach the terminals. This is extravagant waste of time and power. If the Trans- continental roads would make this city their distributing center, if they would stop the prevailing waste of energy and time that are now consumed in a longer haul and an unnecessary back haul to the consumer, they might snap their fingers at water competition, earn dividends for their stockholders and give the people the benefit of more advantageous rates."
Twenty-one years after that was penned, the interstate commerec commission uttered substantially an identical argument when it rendered its final decision up- holding Spokane's claims :
"Spokane (the decision runs), is a great distributing center and aims to be a greater one. It demands the right to rates which will enable it to bring from the cast and distribute into territory lying east of the Cascade range. Such traffic, when distributed from Spokane. is hauled a less distance by 400 miles than when distributed from Seattle, and the distribution haul itself is also much less expen- sive. It is a manifest economie waste to haul traffic over the Cascade mountains and back again. The interest of the carrier and the public as much require that this business should stop at Spokane instead of going on to Seattle as that it should originate in the middle west instead of upon the Atlantic seaboard.
"The carriers insist that they may determine as a matter of policy whether they will meet this water competition and in what manner and at what points; and this is true so far as that is a matter of policy. To a disinterested observer it would seem to be in the true interest of these transcontinental lines, which begin at the Missouri river, to make rates which would build up interior points as against the coast. The haul to these points is shorter and less expensive. The distribution from these points is casier, but, above all. the traffic which is created at such a point belongs to the rail line which creates it. while the traffic which is fostered upon the Coast is the prey of every vessel which sails the sea. Carriers in the Future will doubtless adopt this method and will voluntarily make rates to interior points like Spokane which will enable those localities to compete with coast cities."
As early as 1887, with rapid growth of population and increasing development of transportation, the people of Spokane grew restive and indignant under the discriminating policy of the railroads. The discontent found expression in the Review of May 19.
"Since the suspension of the fourth section of the interstate commerce law." said that journal, "charges on freight to Spokane Falls have been increased fully 100 per cent. This thing smacks very strongly of what is popularly termed 'the grinding corporation.' It is a violent outrage on every rule of fair dealing in busi- ness transactions and is disastrous in its effects upon the business of Spokane Falls merchants. If we are not mistaken the Northern Pacific railroad is building up
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a formidable sentiment against itself, which in days to come will repay these injuries to local business dollar for dollar."
By suspension of the fourth section, the Review had reference to a recent deei- sion by Judge Matthew P. Deady of the federal court at Portland, holding that water competition was a factor which justified, under the law, the charging of higher rates to interior points than to sea-ports.
In the annual report of the board of trade. rendered late in the year 1889, appears this reference to the subject: "The question of freight rates and unjust discrimination against this city by the railroads has been a subject discussed by the board of trade in the past year. In June last, as the result of the work of the committee. a case was prepared against the Northern Pacific railroad for ad- judication before the interstate commerce commission. That case was laid by an association known as the Merchants' Protective association of this city. The board of trade prepared that ease, but the Merchants' Protective association stepped in to fight it. Judge Cooley visited this point and set a date for hearing, but the ease was postponed. and is now on the doeket of the commission in Washington, and will come up for hearing on the 17th inst .. when we hope it will be pushed to a determination."
Spokane's organized fight for justice, therefore, began twenty-three years ago, and within the intervening period our citizens have resolutely employed every legiti- mate weapon that seemed to offer a hope of redress of their wrongs. The inter- state commeree commission, the courts, coneiliation, rataliation-all have been seized upon and used. From the discouragement of one defeat Spokane has rallied with renewed courage for another expensive and arduous contest, and then to another, and yet another. Many a time and oft has it seemed that the city and surrounding regions were helpless vietims of a system that endeavored to hold
"Right forever on the seaffold, Wrong forever on the throne."
In the summer of 1890 shippers were divided in opinion. A few wanted to wage an aggressive fight for terminal rates, but others eritieised the board of trade for antagonizing the railroads, and advocated a more friendly policy of pleading for more favorable distributing rates. To checkmate the O. R. & N., which had entered the eity the previous fall, the Northern Pacific was offering longtime leases of warehouse sites on its right of way. "Rates being equal," ran one provision, "said party of the second part agrees to do his transportation business on the rail- road of the party of the first part in preference to any other." This, of course, would have the certain effect of discouraging rate reductions by the new railroad, for the Northern Pacific, by meeting any possible eut, would continue to hold the business.
Spokane's first case was filed in June. 1889. Nearly two years after, in April, 1891, Judge George Turner was advised by the secretary of the interstate com- merce commission, that the commission would soon be prepared to take up the case of the Spokane Merchants Protective association against the Northern Pacific.
Commissioners W. G. Veazey, Wm. R. Morrison ("Horizontal Bill"), Walter 1. Bragg and M. Knapp arrived in Spokane in May and conducted publie hearings
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from the 27th to the 30th. George Turner and Corporation Counsel H. E. Hough- ton represented the association and the city. The railroad came fortified with a strong array of attorneys and officials. A meeting of citizens in the rooms of the chamber of commerce resolved to push the case with vigor.
While the commission deliberated, a new factor came over the continental divide. The Great Northern railroad, then more widely known as the Manitoba, was push- ing its resolute way to tidewater. Here seemed a potent competitor in the Spokane field, and shippers and consumers took renewed hope from the captivating, honeyed words of the remarkable genius at its head.
President James J. Hill met the citizens in publie meeting, February 9, 1892, and asked for a free right of way through the town. In an extended address he intimated that if a donated right of way were not forthcoming, the Great Northern would pass twenty miles to the north. On the other hand, if a right of way were given, his road would make rates which would enable Spokane to compete success- fully with any city to the west or the south. His roseate promises awoke the live- liest interest and a committee of active citizens was appointed to take up with vigor the task of securing the required right of way. Its members were J. J. Browne, A. M. Cannon, L. C. Dillman, H. L. Tilton, James N. Glover, G. B. Dennis, I. S. Kaufman, A. K. McBroom, D. P. Jenkins, E. J. Webster, W. S. Norman, E. B. Hyde, Charles Monteith, C. R. Burns, N. Toklas, O. B. Nelson, T. S. Griffith, James Monaghan, and S. Rosenhaupt.
As managing editor of the Review, the writer of this volume obtained from Mr. Hill a carefully prepared and authorized statement for publication.
"Mr. Hill (so ran this interview), if you had come to this country eight years ago, and been the only transcontinental carrier here, would you have pursued the poliey that has been pursued by the old roads of adjusting the tariff so that mer- chandise brought here from the east would go through to the coast, only to be ear- ried back to the consumer, far in the interior, thereby entailing an unnecessary haul of from 500 to 1,000 miles, twice over a great mountain range?"
"No, I would not," was the emphatic answer. "For one reason, I think it would be illegal. I think you people have made a mistake in going before the interstate eommerce commission. You should have made a test case-allowed some shipper to refuse to pay more than is paid by the shipper on tidewater, and thus carried the grievance straight into the United States court. I don't think a jury of twelve men could have been found to deeide that such a charge was legal. In that man- ner you could have settled this matter in short order-in a day once the case got before the courts."
At Mr. Hill's request a proof sheet of the foregoing statement was submitted to him, and he returned it to the newspaper office with his approval. In after years this publication was introduced in evidence before the commission. Mr. Hill has never denied its authenticity or its accuracy.
After the right of way had been acquired, Hill returned the following June, and in press interviews "hedged" on his terminal rate offer. "When I was here before." he said, "I promised that Spokane should have rates which would enable her to compete for business with any city west or south of her. By that I meant that she should be put in a position to do the business of the territory rightfully
JAMES J. HILL-" THE EMPIRE BUILDER"
VENTURA S IL LIBRARY
FILLER FUUNCALIDAD
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tributary to her. I stand by that pledge, and it will be redeemed at the proper time." BUT-
"Rate wars are things to be avoided. They do nobody any good. The inevitable result is that the companies get together and agree on a readjustment. Now I believe in adjusting these things in a friendly way."
In an interview given out at Sprague, Mr. Hill said :
"A number of gentlemen, representing, I think, the chamber of commerce, waited on me last evening, and attempted to force me to make a reduction of rates at this time, saying that the right of way had been secured for our road under a promise of terminal rates. I never made any such promise, nor did I intend that any one should put snch a construction on my words. All promises made to the people of Spokane by me on behalf of the Great Northern will be made good, in every re- spect. but no small or large number of men can force us to take any steps that onr own business judgment does not approve, and we will at no time pursue any arbi- trary or unbusinesslike course with our railroad neighbors. Any freight rate that is made inst be a matter of conference and agreement between the parties making it. That is the situation in a few words."
A decision was handed down, November 29, 1892, by the interstate commerce commission in the case of the Merchants Protective association of Spokane against the Northern Pacific. It held that water competition warranted higher commodity rates to Spokane; but the commission found that blanket class rates to Spokane were unreasonable in themselves. "Defendants are ordered." said the decision, "to cease and desist from charging rates on property from eastern points to Spokane which materially exceed 82 per cent of the class rates now in effect, both to Spokane and Pacific coast terminals."
This decision the railroads ignored, contending that the act of congress which created the commission and defined its powers conferred no authority for it to prescribe rates. About that time a federal judge in Georgia sustained this railroad point of view, and it was subsequently confirmed by the supreme court of the United States. In our search for justice, we had traveled many years in a circle, and now found ourselves precisely at the 1889 starting point.
Under date of February 15. 1893, Robert Easson, secretary of the chamber of commerce, wrote a letter to the Review. "I will say (said he) that the new freight rates are much higher than the rates in Ananias Hill's tariff sheets, sent here in December. The new commodity rates, in nearly every instance, in the gro- cery line, are just double what they were in Hill's tariff, and the class rates are twenty per cent higher. It would not be politic at this time to make public the rates named in Iill's tariff. Suffice it to say, they are in good keeping, to be used when the opportune time comes."
The disappearance of these sheets, which Mr. Hill had sent out from St. Panl in December. 1892, to be shown by his agent to certain shippers as evidence of reductions he would presently make. remains one of the unsolved mysteries of the town. The secret of their location seems to have died with Mr. Easson when, in seeming health and buoyant spirits, he reeled and fell on a Lewiston street on the occasion of a most successful excursion of Spokane business men to that neighbor- ing city.
. On complaint of A. W. Doland and other shippers, Judge Hanford, in Septem-
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ber, 1894, entered an order directing the receivers of the Northern Pacific to make answer within twenty days to grievances set forth in an extended petition for justice. This complaint was the outgrowth of a suggestion from Judge Hanford to some of the shippers, that a proceeding of this nature would be found the better and more satisfactory way of seeking justice. Upon the Northern Pacific coming into court as directed. Judge Hanford, on November 21. appointed Lorenzo Saw- yer of San Francisco to take testimony in the case.
But the city's hopes of winning justice from the hands of the federal court were dissipated when the master in chancery, appointed by Judge Hanford nearly three years before, returned a crushing decision against the plaintiffs. On every point involved Sawyer found in favor of the railroads.
A month later, May 21, 1897. the United States supreme court decided that the interstate commerce commission had no power under the law to prescribe freight rates. After ten years of brave hope and effort, the "joker" in the law was fer- reted out by the highest court in the land, and the commission stood stripped of authority and power.
Appeal to the interstate commerce commission had failed. and recent decisions in other United States courts indicating that little or no measure of relief could be expected from that quarter, some of the more aggressive Spokane business men advocated, in 1896, an organization of shippers to pool freight shipments. In support of that plan the writer of this volume wrote, editorially, in January :
"The shippers here should organize and pool their business. If they would do that with energy and entire loyalty to their own interests, they would possess a power that could be exerted with effect. They could fight the matter in the courts, or they could arrange for an exclusive delivery of their business to a single line for one, two, three or five years. As matters stand now they are powerless: they can not have even a hearing."
Leading shippers of the city formed a new association in March, with W. D. Plant, president, and T. F. Spencer secretary. The firm of D. Holzman & Co. had adopted successfully a plan of replevining cars, and Jacob Schiller of that firm said he had started out to fight alone. He tendered the company terminal rates, which were refused, and thereupon he had recourse to the replevin process in the United States court, and in that way got the goods and kept the money, pending an ultimate decision of the case.
A month later this Spokane Freight association raised a fund of $5,700 to fight a rate case before Judge Hanford. the city subscribing $1.000 and the county $500. But this effort, like others gone before. brought no relief to shipper or con- sumner.
Matters drifted until February, 1904, when a strong and aggressive organiza- tion of shippers devised a plan to set the traffic officials of the Northern Pacafe and the Great Northern to serious thinking.
"Whereas (the signed agreement ran). we know that rates of freight to Spokane from eastern points should never justly exceed the prevailing rates to terminal points, plus twenty-five per cent of the corresponding prevailing rates from ter- minal points back to Spokane.
"Therefore, be it resolved, that until such an adjustment of freight rates can
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he effeeted, without increasing any rates now in effect to Spokane from castern points, we agree to give all our business to the O. R. & N."
Signers were Child Bros. & Day, Holley, Mason, Marx & Co., Jones & Dilling- ham, John W. Graham & Co., B. L. Gordon & Co., F. B. Wright & Co., Grote-Ran- kin Co., Spokane Drug Co., Spokane Paper Co., Crane Shoe Co., Empire Candy Co., Shaw & Borden Co .. Boothe-McClintock Co., Best Clothing Co., Cohn Bros., Griffith Heating, Plumbing & Supply Co., Jensen, King, Byrd Co., Spokane Paint & Oil Co .. Tull & Gibbs, Miller, Mower & Flynn, Whitehouse Dry Goods Co .. Spokane Implement Co., Washington Liquor Co .. D. Holzman & Co. These firms paid the railroads annually $750,000.
This drastic remedy grew out of a meeting at Chicago of the freight men of the western roads, where every request of Spokane shippers was coldly ignored. These resolutions attracted immediate attention, and the railroads promptly offered minor reduetions which were promptly rejected by the Spokane organization. To emphasize its dissatisfaction, the association reaffirmed its resolutions. But in April it rescinded the resolutions and agreed to meet in Chicago representatives of the Northern Pacific, Great Northern and O. R. & N. As outcome of that conference the railroads conceded reductions and promised Spokane jobbers control of a terri- torial circle with a diameter of 200 miles. That is to say, Spokane should command the trade for 100 miles in every direction. The principle involved in this adjust- ment is theoretically unsound, and the basis flatly arbitrary, but failing to win justice by other means, the Spokane jobbers felt justified in their use of this weapon, and publie sentiment generally has sustained them throughout the Inland Empire. Shippers, however, have always contended that the railroads failed to live up to this agreement.
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