The Wages of Growth: Seattle's 1876 Economic Anxiety
As Seattle struggled to establish a foothold in a rugged, isolated frontier, local business owners lamented the 'high' cost of labor and warned that economic survival depended on lower pay.
There is no question that the great weight hanging like a millstone about the neck of this country is too high prices for everything except local produce. Men who have attempted enterprise for the development of the country have had extraordinary difficulties to contend with. In the first place, the country is new, rough and poor. But in addition to all this, they must pay twice as much for labor, three times as much for the use of money, and as much for freight across the continent. It is better for laboring men themselves to receive moderate and practical wages in a prosperous country than wages a little bit more than practical in a bankrupt and sinking country. The history of the new settlements of this coast is proof of this. The business man who struggles hard in the days of free 'common' trade, holding his own until the era of railroads, and through labor makes his property valuable, is the only one who reaches any substance or opulence. It is better to have humming industrial progress going on among the masses, sounding with magnetism, than to have all the margins of gain devoured by a small laboring population.
“It is better for laboring men themselves to receive moderate and practical wages in a prosperous country than wages a little bit more than practical in a bankrupt and sinking country.”
This 1876 editorial reflects the perennial tension between developers and laborers in a growing city. Just as Seattle’s modern affordability crisis is often framed by business interests as a matter of 'market forces' and unsustainable costs, the 19th-century elite argued that labor was the 'millstone' preventing true prosperity.
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