The San Juan islander. [volume] (Friday Harbor, Wash.) 1898-1914, 1901-09-05

The Whatcom Blade, In q recent ar
ticle. urges the Bellingham bay mer.
chants to organize stock company to
operate line Of steamers to and from
the San Juan Islands and Seattle and
Tacoma. Among other things it says:
"At present there are but two steamers
making trips to the islands, and one OF
those has never made any effort to assist
In bringing the island trade to Belling-
ham bay and has in fact taken some con-
siderable of It away. The
amount of business to be obtained from
residents Of the islands is. to q certain ex-
tent, problematical, but it is known that
there is large trade that the Bellingham
bay merchants have never had, for the
reason that transportation facilities have
not been favorable. With good boat to
make daily trips and ready market
furnished for products, our present trade
can undoubtedly be quadrupled. One
reason for this would be that when the
islanders were once convinced that their
products would find market on Bellihg-
ham bay greater effort would be made to
produce marketable goods.
ITO get this trade steamer must be
operated by the people whose interests
are on the bay and who have business in
terests to advance. Now is the time to
act. There has been too much Micaw-
berishness in the past. The money is
here for such an enterprise, the material
for successfully operating line of steam
ers is also here, the only thing lacking for
a contamination of such an enterprise
evidently being an apparent lack of in
terest and an ignorance of the real inn
pOrtance such q movement would have
for the Bellingham bay Cities"
Tn connection with the above 1t may
not he amiss TO call attention to the
fact that when the Thompson Bros.
first secured the contract to carry the
the mail on the island route, of which
Whatcom and Port Townsend were the
termini, Capt. Thompson interviewed
the leading merchants of the bay cities
and went before the board Of trade with
q proposition to make Whatcom the
home port of the steamer Lydia
Thompson, buy all of his supplies there,
move his family there and run the
steamer in the interest Of the mer-
chants of Whatcom as far as he could
consistently, upon the one condition
that they would become surety for the
faithful performance of his mail COLI
tract with the government. They gave
him no assistance and offered little or
no encouragement. Then he went to
Seattle with his proposition. He was
q stranger but they took him in and
gave him promptly all he asked. Pre-
vious to that the islands had direct
steamboat connection with Seattle only
once week, when the steamer Evan
gel, OH Saturday nights, went on up
Sound from Port Townsend. The
Thompsons began at once to run
through to Seattle every trip-three
times week, and as result the vol.
ume of their freight and passenger
business rapidly increased: Seattle
furnished All ever ready market for the
staple products Of the islands and the
market for perishable products, such as
fruit, has grown better year by year
with the rapid growth of the "Queen
City" and the development Of the
Alaska trade. The little steamer Lydia
Thompson has not only taken to the
merchants of Seattle tens Of thousands
of dollars worth of trade from the San
Juan islands that the merchants of
Whatcom had the first chance to sc.
cure, but it has become the nucleus of
one of the largest and most profitable
fleets of steamers operated on the
Sound by any one company.