Seattle's Canal Gamble

The subscriptions to the subsidy for the waterway are coming in fairly well, but the movement still lacks that vivacity which it should inspire if the people of Seattle fully appreciated the undertaking. There was an excuse for hesitation so long as the scope of the work, the sincerity of the Eastern capitalists and the character of the subsidy remained in doubt.

There is no longer a shadow of doubt that within our grasp is the greatest opportunity a city ever had to spring into foremost position as a commercial center. The fire was an accident; the activity following it a boom. The doors now thrown open to us display an avenue of steady prosperity which widens as it lengthens—it means the expenditure of millions of dollars in labor, the revival of business, the stimulation of every local industry and the creation of new sources of wealth. It means renewed property values, the disappearance of vacant buildings, the employment of idle hands.

The Seattle and Lake Washington Waterway Company says: “We will fill in the tide lands and dig out the canal; we will put good, hard cash into the work, and trust to your honor to repay us. We will do the work now, and we will wait until we have turned over to you the completed results of our enterprise before we ask you for a dollar.”

Men who hesitate to accept are calculating the risk. Let us do some calculating for them. Is there a laboring man in this city, who owns his home or is settled here with his family, who could not afford 50 cents a week in order to insure employment? In six years that would amount to $150. Is there a storekeeper, the owner of a shop or house, who could not afford $1 a week to have his trade revive or keep his tenement peopled by rent-paying tenants? That would be $300 in six years. There is no more risk in this than there was in mortgaging a lot to put up a building, and trusting to luck to rent it, to pay taxes and keep up interest.

The ship must go through the canal before a dollar is put up; and you cannot float a real ship on a paper canal. The canal must be dug, the locks must be in, and the water must flow from Lake Washington to Puget Sound.

Rash promises should not be made; undue contributions should not be tendered; but the occasion demands even a sacrifice. We had better yield up a share of what we have left than fail in this and lose all. The days are fleeting, millions of dollars await our acceptance or rejection.

Shall the answer of Seattle to St. Louis be “Yes” or “No”?