Land Speculation or Lifeline? The Fight Over Seattle’s Lake Washington Canal

WASHINGTON CITY, July 30.—[Special.] Senator Squire is making a hard fight to keep the Lake Washington item in the river and harbor bill in the conference committee. A very injurious and mischievous statement has been circulated at the capital by enemies of the Lake Washington canal to the effect that it is only projected for the purpose of aiding a big land speculation. This underhanded misrepresentation, the source of which has not been learned, is the chief obstacle he has had to contend with.

Another objection which he has had to meet, also industriously circulated by the same unknown agency, presumably, is that it is purely a local matter, and is not called for by the people of the state or needed for general commerce. The alleged remonstrance of the Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce on this point is continually being lugged out of its pigeon-hole in proof of this. If the Port Townsend body has ever disavowed this remonstrance it is not known here. Southern members of the river and harbor committee, whose hardest work this year has been in keeping down all Northern appropriations, in order that there might be larger slices of the pie for their own cutting, have been well fortified from somewhere with all these objections.

A third difficulty arises from the house conferees being anxious to avoid putting any new improvements into the bill this year on account of the unfavorable conditions of the national finances. In reply to this objection, Senator Squire is arguing that the state of Washington ought not to be treated the same as older states, since the latter have large items in the bill as “continuing improvements,” also items calling for annual appropriations which have been taken out of the river and harbor bill and put into the sundry civil appropriation bill.

In spite of all discouragement the senator is still hopeful of retaining the item in the bill, if only for a small sum, realizing that after the work is once begun it will be far easier to secure future appropriations to carry it on and complete it.