The 1878 Fight to Ban Corporate Land Hoarding
As Washington prepares for statehood, delegates debate a radical proposal to break up concentrated land ownership and prevent corporate monopolies.
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.
In the proceedings for the Declaration of Rights, Mr. Larrabee offered an additional section regarding miscellaneous rights: After the admission of the State into the Union, no person, corporation, company or association shall thereafter acquire and own in fee simple, by purchase, conveyance, gift, devise, or through any other means, more than 640 acres of land, or a section of land according to the surveys of the United States. Every such lease, gift, devise, grant or other means of giving title to any person, corporation, company or association, shall be void as to any excess over and above such limitation. The motion was put to a vote, resulting in 7 Ayes and 6 Noes. This historic attempt to curb the power of land developers and concentrated ownership underscores the intense local anxiety regarding the control of resources in the territory.
“Every such lease, gift, devise, grant or other means of giving title to any person, corporation, company or association, shall be void as to any excess over and above such limitation.”
This 1878 constitutional debate predates the modern 'missing middle' and land-banking crises by nearly 150 years. The fear expressed by these delegates—that large-scale private entities would hoard land at the expense of the public good—remains a central, unresolved friction in Seattle’s current development landscape.
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