Seattle’s Half-Million-Dollar Canal Fund Was $16,000 Short
A subscription drive for the South Canal neared its half-million-dollar goal in 1896, with bricklayers pledging $1,000 apiece and boosters pressing tardy donors to pay up.
The South Canal subscription fund has grown by $5,000, but it still lacks more than $16,000 of the half-million dollars required to ensure construction. The committee reports that several subscribers who made earlier pledges have failed to send in their money, and their delinquency has seriously delayed the work. They are urgently requested to settle at once so the enterprise can be completed.
Among the new and increased subscriptions were $1,000 gifts from bricklayers, a $1,000 contribution from Pearson, and increased pledges from John M. Lyon and William Campbell of the Port Blakeley Mill Company. Thomas A. Bain left a bequest by codicil, and Peter Burns offered his subscription of $1,000. Supporters in South Park also appeared on the list, a sign that the neighborhood that stood to benefit from the canal was helping to finance it.
“It still lacks over $16,000.”
In 1896 Seattle’s canal was a half-million-dollar civic subscription drive, with boosters chasing pledges and warning that unpaid commitments could stall the work. The same tension—public benefit, private money, and missing funds—still defines Seattle’s infrastructure fights today.
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