The Waterfront Exclusion
Citizens are being physically hustled off the docks as a new, exclusionary policy takes hold during passenger boat arrivals.
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.
For a short time, a very obnoxious order has been in force on the City and Ocean Docks in this city, excluding citizens of the town from the fronts and warehouses during the landing of passenger boats. It is a new-fangled notion, and possibly may work to the satisfaction of the warehousemen, but to the old settlers, who have been accustomed to something different, it is a hardship and a tyranny of no small character. To be taken by the shoulder and hustled out like a thief or a vagabond is not only humiliating, but intensely aggravating, and more especially is this so when no good purpose whatever is thereby subserved. If any harm was ever done to any of the boats, wharves, warehouses, freight, baggage, or passengers by the standing around of spectators, there might possibly be excuse for such an order, but as there never has been it is harsh, arbitrary, ill-advised, and needless, and should be rescinded at once.
“To be taken by the shoulder and hustled out like a thief or a vagabond is not only humiliating, but intensely aggravating.”
This early grievance over public access to the waterfront prefigures the century-long struggle for control of Seattle's shoreline. Even in 1884, residents were fighting against the privatization of space that had previously been considered communal or accessible.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.