Less than a year has passed since Tacoma entered regularly into the shipping of grain and flour to foreign markets, though practically this business began the present year, after the completion of the tunnel through the mountains. During the year ending June 30, 1888, there were shipped from this port eight hundred and thirty-eight thousand two hundred and thirty-three bushels of grain, and the estimated quantity for the current fiscal year is four million five hundred thousand bushels, requiring a grain fleet of sixty vessels, being an average of one cargo dispatched every six days. Owing to the fact that vessels can enter Puget sound more cheaply than the Columbia river, and can discharge and receive cargo and get to sea again cheaper, charters are much lower here than at Portland, and the price of wheat proportionately higher. For this reason the wheat along the line of the Northern Pacific, which, before the completion of the road over the mountains, was shipped to Portland, now comes to Tacoma. As the Northern Pacific and its branches and connecting lines ramify the entire wheat region east of the Cascades, where twenty million bushels will be produced this year, it can be seen that an estimate of four million five hundred thousand bushels for the present year is not a large one. Wheat warehouses, with a capacity of five hundred thousand bushels, have been built on the water front, and are being doubled in size. The Northern Pacific Elevator Co. is erecting a four-story elevator, with a capacity of a million bushels, and has elevators and warehouses at all the principal shipping points in the interior. The only steam flouring mill on Puget sound is located here. Not only is this port superior to Portland as a general shipping point for grain and flour, but it has special advantages in the China trade, which consumes twenty-five hundred barrels per month of Pacific coast flour. Recognizing this, gentlemen engaged largely in manufacturing flour in Oregon are erecting an immense mill with a daily capacity of one thousand barrels, which will begin grinding next season.