Seattle Goes Door to Door to Dig Its Canal
Volunteers bank nearly $28,000 in a single day, pushing the $800,000 Lake Washington Waterway fund close to its goal — with everyone from banks to hardware clerks chipping in.
The subscriptions to the $800,000 subsidy for the Seattle & Lake Washington Waterway Company continued to pour in by the hour. Nearly $28,000 was taken during the day, carrying the fund close to its immense goal.
The work done by the volunteers yesterday was all that could be desired. The full list of solicitors was diligently at work, and the total was augmenting in every part of town. It will be a week's work at least before the canvass is complete.
Among the hundreds of pledges were sums from leading business houses, banks, physicians and individual citizens — and, in a single signed sheet, the employees of the Seattle Hardware Company, who wrote: 'We, the undersigned, employees of the Seattle Hardware Company, will subscribe towards the Seattle and Lake Washington canal subsidy as follows.' Their names filled a long column, with single gifts from fifty cents to one hundred dollars.
There will be no trouble about any work the committee asks, if the engineers will only push the enterprise forward. The books already show that the whole city is behind the undertaking, and the committees expect to reach the full amount within the week. In an error of the press, A. A. Wright should have appeared in the issue of April 3 for $25, and M. L. Alfred should read M. L. Alford.
“We, the undersigned, employees of the Seattle Hardware Company, will subscribe towards the Seattle and Lake Washington canal subsidy.”
In 1895 Seattleites went door to door to bankroll a ship canal connecting Lake Washington to Puget Sound. That canal finally opened in 1917 and reshaped the city. The region still argues over who should pay for the megaprojects that will define its future.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.