The Millionaire Who Wanted His Waterworks Back
A California capitalist offers Seattle $16,000 for a sixty-day option on the water and light plants the city bought two years ago — as a damage suit over the deal heads to court.
Seattle, March 8.—C. B. Wright, the California millionaire, has offered the city $16,000 for an option on the water and light plants he sold to the city two years ago for nearly $200,000. Citizens have thought the price paid was too much, and as a result a damage suit against Mr. Wright is now pending in the superior court. His offer has been referred to the authorities. The option asked for is sixty days in which to purchase the plant for the price he received.
“He Wishes to Buy Back Worthless Waterworks.”
The 1889 waterworks fight was an early Seattle argument about whether basic infrastructure should be public or private — and what a city owes when it buys a private utility. The millionaire's 'bluff' and the pending damage suit read like a preview of modern debates over utility rates, privatization and public-private deals.
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