Seattle Raises a Half-Million to Cut a Canal to the Sea
In a dreary year, the Queen City's newsboys, millionaires and merchants finished a voluntary $500,000 subsidy for the Lake Washington ship canal—proof, admirers said, that Seattle could fight its own battles and win.
Seattle has completed the raising of the last dollar of the $500,000 subsidy which is to secure for the city a canal connecting the waters of Puget Sound with those of Lake Washington. The amount was raised last Thursday; after the full sum had been subscribed, several additional large subscriptions were received by the committee, swelling the total to a considerable sum over that actually required.
The people of Seattle are to be congratulated on their enterprise and pluck in attempting, in times like the present, such a gigantic undertaking as the raising of a half-million dollars by voluntary subscriptions for any project. No community but one that has been made self-reliant by fighting its own battles and achieving victory in spite of a selfish corporation adverse to its growth and favorable to a rival city in which it was interested could ever have succeeded as Seattle has in raising such a large sum for a work of internal improvement, even though it be fraught with great possibilities in the future growth of the city. All honor to the Queen City and its enterprising people.
The Seattle people, with the energy that has always characterized them, have raised a subsidy of half a million dollars for the building of the canal. To the staid St. Louisans this must seem like a remarkable feat, and it really is doubtful whether the undertaking could have succeeded in any other city in the country during these dull times. Seattle is all right. Her future is assured, and Washington is proud of her Queen city.
On Thursday last Seattle completed the raising of the half-million-dollar bonus for the building of the Lake Washington ship canal, and the work will be commenced at once. Seattle's energy and enterprise are certainly commendable.
From her humblest newsboys to her millionaires, cooperation pervaded every stratum of the community and linked her people in a successful public effort, attracting the applause of the continent. The effect of this on Seattle's people is that it puts into motion among them a spirit of harmony and money power; and less directly it will have an inspiriting effect upon the whole population of the Sound. 'Pull together' is a text so full of sound philosophy that it preaches its own sermon.
“No community but one that has been made self-reliant by fighting its own battles and achieving victory in spite of a selfish corporation adverse to its growth ... could ever have succeeded as Seattle has.”
The canal was ultimately built by the federal government, but in 1895 Seattle boosters put up the money themselves to force the issue. The episode reads like a Gilded Age version of a stadium or light-rail fight: private subscriptions and civic boosterism used to unlock infrastructure and decide which city wins. The Lake Washington Ship Canal still defines Seattle's geography, from Ballard to Montlake.
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