The present population as attested by the recent census returns is 53,531; though the current city directory, compiled immediately after the census enumeration, gives names and addresses of nearly seventy thousand resident inhabitants. The city's growing importance as a manufacturing, commercial, railroad, and mining centre is generally recognized: while its enterprise, progressiveness, and wealth are of national repute. But beyond all such it is to be characterized as a city of homes. From cottage to mansion its residences are very generally owned by their tenants. Its citizens are, for the most part, permanent residents and the city is theirs. Its increase has been that of development rather than of growth; the distinction is a vital one, for it characterizes the expansion of the living organism as against mere accretion of substance. With such a development in the course of less than five and a half decades, what shall be its condition and status when its years have linked themselves into centuries? [Illustration] FOOTNOTE: [16] Some secular officials, such as marshals and other peace officers, had been chosen, but these were generally nominated by the Church leaders and elected or "sustained" by vote of the people in Church gatherings. The secular power exercised by the Church officials was expressly delegated to them by vote of the people. [Illustration] SPOKANE THE CITY OF THE INLAND EMPIRE By HAROLD BOLCE Sculptors have not yet chiselled the glory of the founders of Spokane, for most of the pioneers of that city, heedless of remote epitaphs, still hurry over its now "populous pavements," multiplying their wealth. Boys born in the first year of the city's incorporation have not yet reached the age of suffrage. Less than thirty years ago the settlement began with three citizens and a sawmill. It has developed into a brick and granite city of nearly fifty thousand. A century ago a few brave men blazed perilous trails through the wilderness of the far Northwest but their picturesque adventures gave no hint of the city of wealth, industry, and architectural beauty that was to rise on both banks of the Spokane cataract. Though Jefferson's renowned secretary, Meriwether Lewis, and his comrade Clark, brother of George Rogers Clark, heralded the day when the Oregon and its affluents should hear sounds more significant than their own dashings, their pilgrimage had become as dim as a tradition to the men of the present generation who first floated Coeur d'Alene tamarack and cedar down the swift Spokane to their sawmill at the falls.