The Great Northern Pacific Railroad Robbery
In 1878, Seattle citizens packed a town hall to condemn the Northern Pacific Railroad, alleging that corporate greed and land fraud were strangling the territory's economic future.
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.
Pursuant to a call upon Judge Jacobs to address the citizens of Seattle on the railroad situation, the hall was filled by an interested audience. Judge Jacobs proceeded to state the history of the Northern Pacific Railroad for the last fourteen years, detailing how the company connected with various land and town-site companies. He argued that railroad managers had used the land subsidy to enrich themselves through these parasite companies, while the land remained withheld from market and settlement. For more than ten years, nearly one-half of the land within our borders has been withheld, and not a mile of railroad has been constructed by that company in an eastern direction. The audience adopted resolutions condemning this policy, stating that the Northern Pacific Railroad has no present intention of making a bona fide attempt to construct the road to Puget Sound, characterizing the corporate maneuvers as nothing less than 'folly and fraud.'
“The policy of withholding from market millions of acres of the fairest portion of our Territory... for the ostensible purpose of granting the same to the said company... can be characterized by no other terms than 'folly and fraud.'”
The 1878 frustration with the Northern Pacific Railroad—where land was hoarded by speculators rather than used for public housing or settlement—mirrors modern Seattle's ongoing struggle with land-banking, corporate property ownership, and the feeling that transit and housing infrastructure is constantly promised but rarely delivered to the public benefit.
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