Peter Kirk's Iron Works Signal Seattle's Manufacturing Ambitions
A bold call in 1887 to turn Seattle into a premier manufacturing powerhouse by offering free land and tax incentives to incoming factories.
It is now a settled fact that the great iron works of which Peter Kirk is the moving spirit will be located in this county. Seattle will be better situated for manufacturing purposes than any other city in the United States. While there are other regions where lumber is plenty, or coal is plenty, or iron is plenty, there is no other region where all these are so plenty and so cheap as they are in the immediate neighborhood of Seattle. It remains for our citizens to call the attention of the world to these advantages by organized and systematic effort. Manufacturers should be made to understand that the land necessary for manufacturing purposes will be donated by the citizens. The city should remit the taxes for a term of years on the plants of all manufacturing industries established within a certain time. Everything possible should be done to secure the immediate location of more factories.
“There is no other region where all these are so plenty and so cheap as they are in the immediate neighborhood of Seattle.”
This 1887 editorial captures the exact moment Seattle transitioned from a timber-trading outpost to an industrial center. The aggressive 'corporate welfare' model described—donating land and waiving taxes—remains a recognizable echo in contemporary debates over how the region incentivizes massive tech campuses and infrastructure projects today.
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