The Sound's Freight Wars
Seattle merchants sound the alarm as steamboat companies hit the city with discriminatory freight rates that favor Tacoma and Tumwater.
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.
We hear complaints from leading freighters of this city of an unreasonable discrimination made by the steamboats between freights from here and from Tacoma and other points. We are informed that they charge three dollars a ton on flour from here to Port Townsend and carry the same article from Tacoma for one dollar, and from Tumwater for one dollar and a quarter. From here to Victoria the tariff is four dollars, and from Tacoma only one dollar and a half. This kind of partiality works a serious hardship to our people by thwarting the establishment and growth of manufactures here, upon which our prosperity depends. Its effect is to keep the Sound in a condition of tributary vassalage, instead of becoming commercially independent and a point of export. It cannot be that local steamboat companies find it to their interest thus practically to make naught of the patronage of this and the northern counties, but it looks as though the patronage of Seattle and the lower portions of the Sound were held as of comparatively little consequence relatively to that of the places that are favored with these special rates. If freights can be carried to Victoria from Tacoma for a dollar and a half at a profit, it can be carried there from Seattle, at least as cheaply. The only objection that the people of Seattle can make in the matter is to the inequality. The arrangement is neither fair nor equitable.
“Its effect is to keep the Sound in a condition of tributary vassalage, instead of becoming commercially independent and a point of export.”
In 1876, Seattle’s economic future felt precarious as it battled monopolistic transport rates that favored its neighbors. Today, the city’s 'tributary vassalage' has been replaced by debates over corporate influence and the high cost of regional infrastructure, but the anxiety over maintaining Seattle’s competitive edge remains a constant feature of our civic dialogue.
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