Roads ll

Reviewing the last post I see I should have checked it.  Some of it went in that big waste basket in the sky.  Not sure how that happened.  I guess I rested my finger on the wrong thing.  Anyway in the middle or so I talked about the roads and what NW newspapers in the 1850s had to say about over land mail.  Many of the Puget Sound towns of the era wanted mail sent by water.  It was usually faster and arrived in one piece.  While mail sent overland from Portland to Olympia and beyond arrived in a soggy, muddy state.  Much of it unreadable.  The mail had to travel in a stage with little or no protection from the elements.  The roads were so wet and muddy that the muck creeped into every crack on the stage making it almost impossible to protect mail or passengers.

Today with the internet and phones we sometimes fail to see the importance of mail.  In the early days it was of allr imporant.  It was the only way people had to communicate over long distances.  All business was handled through the mail.  It may take days or months to complete a transaction, but it was the only way it could be conducted.

 We like to say it was a slower paced time.  It was, but not for the reasons we talk about.  It was because an activity took months to complete.  The nerves it takes today to do business was the same then. If you were going to complete a deal it might take a couple weeks where today it might take minutes or a day or so.  Can you picture your self completing a loan transaction for a company deal knowing it will take six months to know if the deal is a go or not.  Then when an answer came it was just a wad of wet unreadable paper. 

Yes it was a slower time.  But the wait was longer.  The choice is yours. Now not then.