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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1877 | 2 |
| 1878 | 3 |
5 stories matching devise
- The 1878 Fight to Ban Corporate Land Hoarding
As Washington prepares for statehood, delegates debate a radical proposal to break up concentrated land ownership and prevent corporate monopolies.
- The audacious railroad land grab that made Seattle's delegate a target
Facing attacks from the Tacoma Herald, Judge Orange Jacobs is praised for blocking a Northern Pacific claim to 783,600 acres — land the railroad tried to take for building just 31 miles of a 'branch road' to a coal mine.
- The Fight for Seattle’s Soil
A 19th-century editorial warns that land monopolies and timber speculation threaten to turn Washington into a land of feudal tenants, sparking a civic debate on who truly owns the future of the Northwest.
- Seattle's 1877 Plea: Build a Wagon Road Over the Cascades Before Portland Steals the Inland Empire
With no railroad yet across the mountains, a Seattle newspaper argued the city's future depended on a wagon road to Yakima—before Portland grabbed the inland trade forever.
- The Fight for the Soil: Washington's Early Constitutional Crisis
An 1870s editorial argues that without strict land ownership caps, Washington Territory faces a future of feudalism and labor exploitation.