North Star Port

Viewed from Capitol Hill, it seemed like a grand plan, but a closer look—for example, from Duluth's J. Edgar Thomp- son Hill—revealed dire consequences for the growing Port of Duluth, which stood to have its customs offices and all related businesses moved 150 miles inland to St. Paul, Minnesota, as part of the consolidation. "It is possibly true that some customs districts on the Atlantic Coast should be consolidated," conceded the Marine Record of Cleveland, but the proposed removal from Duluth, "a city of much population, many maritime interests, and a natural port of entry situated at the very head of navigation, with a long national boundary line, and clearing and entering during a single year ves- sels of the largest class representing a tonnage of over 800,000 tons, to St. Paul, an inland city, without any of the above advantages, and no maritime commerce whatever, presents itself to our mind as a reversal of the eternal fitness of things, as the tail wagging the dog." Calling the proposed measure "a gross injustice" to Duluth, the Marine Record then lauded efforts from the 14-year-old Duluth Chamber of Commerce and the city's Board of Trade, which found in the measure a unifying purpose. Fighting on behalf of its members and the community, chamber officials formed an aggressive lobbying committee and petitioned Min- nesota's Representative Knute Nelson and Senator Samuel McMillan for help in amending or defeating the measure, which would have crippled the port. "Duluth business men … have done all that in their power lies to avert the threatened danger to her port and ship- ping by respectfully but vigorously memorializing congress and exposing the unjust discrimination of the mea- sure, both generally against the North- west and particularly against Duluth," explained the Marine Record. "The actual commerce of this port, as truly indicated by the receipts and ship- ments, has steadily and rapidly increased," reported the Weekly Tribune, "and will continue to do so until in comparatively few years, Duluth will be second to no port on the whole chain of lakes." That prediction was soon realized— and in no small part because the cus- toms consolidation measure of 1884 was eventually defeated. As a result, Dulu- th's customs office was preserved and Cleveland's Marine Record gained a new subscriber, the Duluth Chamber of Com- merce, which signaled its appreciation for the newspaper's advocacy as part of a formal motion in 1884. DULUTHPORT.COM | 11 1884: By the Numbers At season's end, the Duluth Weekly Tribune reported a list of the port's maritime cargo highlights: • More than 370,000 tons of coal • Almost 100,000 bricks • 7,463 tons of steel rail • 1,481,000 feet of lumber • 4 million shingles • More than 414,000 barrels of flour • A then-record grain total of nearly 6 million bushels, an increase of 77 percent over the prior year's receipts, made possible in part by the construction of three new grain elevators that doubled the port's capacity. In 1884, the fledgling Port of Duluth withstood a brash attempt to consolidate customs offices across the U.S.

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