A Banker’s Private Fleet for Returning Soldiers
When the government failed to bring Washington's volunteers home from the Philippine-American War, a local multi-millionaire stepped in to charter ships for their return to Puget Sound.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Returning Washington volunteers who have been mustered out in San Francisco will be brought back from California on specially chartered steamships. Levi Ankeny, the multi-millionaire banker of Walla Walla and one of the principal owners of the Post-Intelligencer, has written to Mr. Collins of the paper offering to personally defray the transportation costs of the soldiers. It is Mr. Ankeny’s desire to secure the return of the volunteers to Puget Sound in a body, and he considers Seattle to be the proper place for debarkation. Acting on information of Mr. Ankeny's intended contribution, Mayor Humes this morning issued a call for members of the city's various committees to meet this afternoon at his office to prepare plans for a royal welcome home to the returning volunteers.
“Mr. Ankeny's desire to secure the return of the volunteers to Puget Sound in a body, and he considers Seattle to be the proper place for debarkation.”
This 1900 report reflects the era's reliance on wealthy 'civic boosters' to provide public infrastructure—like transport—when government logistics failed. Today, this resonates with the way Seattle's civic leaders and private tech wealth often intervene to solve public-sector crises, though the scale and nature of these 'heroic' private interventions remain a point of modern political friction.
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