The Seattle-Tacoma Rivalry Began with Petty Insults
While Tacoma boosters once mocked Seattle’s 'niggardly' natural gifts, the Dispatch fired back with a masterclass in civic trash-talk.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Our Tacoma contemporary, while boasting of the superior natural advantages of that location, expresses 'profound compassion' for Seattle, that the 'seeming partiality of Nature, who, in her distribution of the natural keys to the commercial wealth of this Northwest, has left Seattle such a niggardly portion.' Considering the fact that the proprietors of Tacoma expended the proceeds of 2,688,000 acres of Government lands, valued at $5,720,000, to build a railroad to that place, with the special purpose of improving the 'natural advantages' of the town, and thus enhance the value of their own private speculation; and that at the end of three years thereafter their town did not contain a hundred inhabitants, and that four-fifths of the goods offered for sale in that town today were purchased in Seattle; that the people of Seattle in the mean time, without any outside aid, built twenty miles of railroad, received an accession of over 2,000 population; more than doubled their manufactures and commerce, and are now doing the main portion of the jobbing business for Tacoma; Seattle has little cause to envy Tacoma its superior natural advantages. 'The gods help those who help themselves.'
“The gods help those who help themselves.”
The century-old rivalry between Seattle and Tacoma remains a foundational myth of Puget Sound, though today's 'natural advantages' discourse has shifted from shipping and railroads to tech giants and housing inventory. This editorial captures the exact moment Seattle transitioned from a scrappy port town to the region's dominant economic hub, fueled by a deep-seated defensive pride that still colors local civic identity.
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