The Town That Almost Reached a Thousand
In 1876, Seattle's growing pains were measured by the ballot box, as the bustling port struggled to tally its transient maritime population.
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.
Nothing tells the story of our growth more emphatically than the rapid increase in the number of our voters. Two years ago, we had less than a thousand, but this year, we have nearly that number of actual votes. There were nearly a hundred turned away on account of unsatisfactory credentials of qualification, mainly from insufficient terms of residence or non-citizenship. Nearly another hundred of actual voters employed in the steamboat service were not present on account of the fortuitous absence of the greater part of our local steamer fleet. Also, transient mariners in port were less than usual by several score of men owing to the temporary slackness in the shipping trade. To these, still larger numbers must be added for the little army of those who never vote, and those newcomers who have entered the Territory within the past six months and consequently did not appear at the polls. Therefore, we can safely claim for our city a round thousand at the present time, even allowing an ample estimate for possible repeaters and out-voters from outside. A comparison with the figures of the returns of former years furnishes a suggestive contrast. Two years ago, Seattle polled for delegate less than half as many as this year. In 1871, King County polled 418 votes; in 1873, 563; in 1875, 854.
“Nothing tells the story of our growth more emphatically than the rapid increase in the number of our voters.”
The 1876 struggle to count an transient, maritime workforce sounds remarkably familiar to modern Seattle, where 'growth' and 'population' remain the central metrics of our civic anxiety. Just as the paper scrambled to justify its 'thousand voters' against a shifting, working-class population, today's headlines grapple with who truly belongs to and is represented by the city's housing and electoral maps.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.