The Growing Pains of Everett
A nostalgic look at the early days of Everett, from the rough-and-tumble construction boom to the economic despair of the 'hard times' and the eventual rise of a working-class city.
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.
Everett slid from her ways into the waters of the Snohomish river. The forests vanished and structures arose under the skillful hands of hurrying workmen. From everywhere people hurried to get in on a good thing, and late comers cheerfully slept on a shelf if beds were unobtainable. Everett got her share of the riff-raff, too, which no new town escapes. Dance halls and gambling hells flourished. But the young city grew apace in spite of this objectionable element. The undercurrent of decency and good citizenship was too strong and was destined to finally throw off the greater part of the vicious flotsam which floated on the tide of prosperity. Any chronicler of events in Everett's history would be glad to pass over the years of famine which followed the advent of the late administration. It is a nightmare to the whole country, but especially so to Everett. The big nail factory closed. The bread and butter question became an acute issue to many. Men are still living here who left their families with a month's credit at the grocery store and what little cash they had, and struck out afoot 150 miles where they had heard they might find work. And so they stuck it out. Finally, better times began to dawn. Manufacturers of forest products began pouring in their money in the erection of lumber and shingle mills. From a population of eight thousand in 1900, it grew to thirty-five thousand in the year 1909. It has always been a home city—a city where the workingmen owned their own abiding places. Everett may point with pride to her working people as the salt of the earth.
“Men are still living here who left their families with a month's credit at the grocery store and what little cash they had, and struck out afoot 150 miles where they had heard they might find work.”
This 1909 editorial captures the cyclical nature of Everett’s economy, reflecting on the 'hard times' that define boom-and-bust cycles. Its pride in working-class homeownership mirrors the city's long-standing identity as a place for laborers rather than just elite investors, an identity that remains central to Everett’s civic debates today.
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