Postoffice receipts more than confirm the foregoing estimates as to TACOMA’S growth and present population. The receipts of the TACOMA postoffice for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1904, were $113,599, as compared with $63,928 for the year ending June 30, 1900. The increase in postoffice receipts is at the rate of 14.7 per cent. in one year; 28.2 per cent. in two years; 53.7 per cent. in three years and 77.4 per cent. in four years. The increase in population as above shown by an increase of 10,011 in the number of names in the city directory is at the considerably lower rate of 59.0 per cent. in four years. CAUSES CONTRIBUTING TO GROWTH. TACOMA’S rapid growth is attributable to two principal causes. First, the industrial, and second, the commercial development of the city. There are abundant grounds for the prediction that TACOMA will not only continue to hold her position as the leading manufacturing city in the State of Washington, but will rapidly become one of the greatest industrial centers in the world. TACOMA possesses unequalled facilities for manufacturing in several important fields of industry. The first superior advantage is abundance of cheap power; the second is the possession or command of the raw materials, and the third is direct transportation facilities placing her in touch with the markets of the world. [Illustration: Some New Buildings. 1—Masonic Temple and Hoska Building. 2—Rhodes Bros. Department Store. 3—Hyson Apartments. 4—Provident Life & Trust Company’s Building. ] ABUNDANCE OF COAL AND COKE. Mr. E. W. Parker, of the United States Geological Survey, who served by appointment of President Roosevelt as one of the anthracite strike arbitrators, recently called the attention of the Washington State Press Association to the fact that Pennsylvania, Illinois, Colorado and Washington are the chief coal-producing States in the four longitudinal sections or belts of the United States from east to west and that each of these States takes the lead in manufacturing among all the States in its section. Washington has incalculable supplies of coal of excellent quality for producing heat and generating steam. The coal is stored in the Cascade Mountains and the mines of Pierce, Kittitas and Southern King Counties are in close and direct railway communication with TACOMA. It is said that the cars loaded with coal at fifty mine openings in Western Washington, would run by gravity into TACOMA by simply unloosening the brakes. TACOMA has huge bunkers for coaling steamships and a line of colliers plies constantly between this port and San Francisco. The best, if not the only coking coal yet mined in Washington is found in abundance in Pierce County within thirty miles of TACOMA. But fuel from the waste of the great lumber mills is so abundant and cheap in TACOMA that the tremendous advantage of her proximity to the rich coal fields of Washington is not as yet fully realized. INEXHAUSTIBLE SUPPLY OF POWER.