The Seattle post-intelligencer. [volume] (Seattle, Wash. Terr. [Wash.]) 1888-1914, 1892-03-22
THE CRACKER TRUST.
It Has Closed Down the Queen City and
Tacoma Factories.


Tacoma Factories.
The consolidation of the four cracker
companies on the northern coast, the
Portland Cracker Company, the Tacoma
Cracker Company and the Queen City
Cracker Company and the Northwestern
Cracker Company. Of Seattle, has finally
been fully consummated, and the result is
that the factories of the Tacoma
Cracker Company and the Queen City
Cracker Company have been shut down
permanently. A. NJ. Brookes, the presl
dent of the latter company, when asked
last evening with reference to the final
steps taken in the consolidation of the
companies, said:
We have simply incorporated as one company
under the laws OF Oregon. Our capital stock is
fixed at $4,000 and each of the old companies
are stockholders. We have adopted tho name
OF the Portland Cracker Company, though the
factories operated will continue doing business
under their former names. The reasons for
shutting down the factories of the Tacoma
Cracker Company and the Queen City Cracker
Company was simply that the capacity OF the
four factories was more than twice what We re-
quired. The Portland factory and that OF the
Northwestern Cracker Company here can moro
than supply the demand. Ofcourse people will
imagine that it is done to limit the output and
force prices up. but give you my word it is
not. The whole arrangement is purely an
economic measure made necessary by
the competition which. was found
to result in disaster As 1t Was, none OF the fac
tories could run steady, but were compelled to
shut down every once in . while because the
amount OF goods produced exceeded the de-
mand. The worknen were thrown idle and the
factories were losing money. We have made
but little advance in prices here, and in Port
land We have made no advance. We simply es-
tablish our prices here to correspond with what
the prices have been in Portland for over year.
We abolished the discount and sell at list prices
for net weight good. The reported advance of
a cent per pound was on short weight goods,
because We want to encourage the demand for
net weight goods. The difference is this
On short weight goods we deduct
enough goods to pay for the pack
age, while on net weight goods
the package is charged for extra making about
weight. Herstofors the bulk OF the demand
here has been Tor short weight goods, and we
want to establish the other system, which is in
vogue in the East. Our prices now are under
Eastern prices and think under San Francisco
prices, but we do not intend to make any fur
Their advance unles. an advance in -four war
rants it The present prices will be the basis on
which We propose to do business. presume
some of the grocers do not like the arrangement
because they cannot get big discounts a. they
used to before, but the trouble with them is
they do not understand the necessity for taking
the STEP and do not care If the factories all ran
into bankruptcy SO long az they could buy goods
cheap The factory at Spokane is not in the ar
rangemsnt, but, as the Portland company owns
large amount of its stock, 1t will adopt our
scale OF prices.