Taxation Without Infrastructure: The Skagit River Fight of 1880
While Washington Territory sent tax dollars to Washington D.C., federal officials offered little in return, forcing local residents to build their own river infrastructure.
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.
The river and harbor appropriation bill reported to the House on the 4th inst includes: Constructing a canal around the cascades of the Columbia river, $100,000; upper Columbia and Snake rivers, $15,000; upper Willamette river, $12,000; lower Willamette and Columbia rivers from Portland, Oregon, to the sea, $45,000; Skagit river, W. T., $2,500; Cowlitz river, W. T., $2,000; Chehalis river, W. T., $7,400. These appropriations show very clearly the distinction which is made by Congress in dispensing the fostering care of the Government between States and Territories—between citizens who have a voice in the Government and those who are subject to taxation without representation. Of the $324,000 of appropriation above mentioned, $321,500 are for rivers and harbors wholly within or directly tributary to Oregon, and the balance of $2,500—$ of 1 per cent upon the whole—for the improvement of the Skagit river, which a Government engineer officially reported could not be made navigable for less than $20,000. It has been made navigable for 70 miles, exclusively at private cost, without the aid of a dollar from the Government, and there are now five steamers regularly employed in navigating these waters. After all this has been done solely by private enterprise, the pitiful appropriation of $2,500, which would hardly pay the expenses of an engineer to come and look at it, is adding insult to injury, like casting a sixpence to a poor relation whose patrimony you are withholding.
“The pitiful appropriation of $2,500, which would hardly pay the expenses of an engineer to come and look at it, is adding insult to injury.”
The frustration of being a 'territory' (or a state with little federal pull) echoes today's debates about how Seattle’s tax dollars are prioritized in state and federal budgets. The 1880s struggle over Skagit River navigation highlights a recurring Pacific Northwest theme: the tension between rugged private enterprise and the need for federally funded infrastructure.
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