The Art of Boosting: How Early Seattle Built a Territory
In an era before mass media, Seattle’s newspaper editors viewed themselves as the primary architects of immigration, using booster journalism to lure settlers to the Pacific Northwest.
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 benefits of immigration into a new country is a matter about which there is no difference of opinion. It is this alone that attracts capital and manufacture, relieves the isolation and destitution of the farmer's lot, and flushes through the cities works of public use and convenience. To secure this desired immigration, two kinds of procedure are requisite. The one is a healthful activity in works of public improvement. The other consists in advertising the country. An instance of the advantages of this latter plan has come directly under our notice within the past month in the case of an article descriptive of one of the islands in the lower Sound which appeared in this journal. Only a few weeks had elapsed before we received a communication from that island stating that the article in question had already been the means of bringing in some five or six families of new settlers, and 'the cry is still they come.' If such of our readers in the various counties who have the advantage of thorough acquaintance with the country would take the pains to prepare and send us for publication careful descriptive particulars in regard to vacant farming land and openings for other business in their vicinity, they would accomplish a double benefit—first, in the profit of their own community; and second, in the guidance of the wayworn 'stranger within the gate.'
“The cry is still they come.”
This 1876 editorial reflects the perennial Seattle obsession with growth and the power of 'branding' a city to attract new residents. Just as editors then urged readers to market the 'resources' of the Sound to weary settlers, modern Seattle continues to grapple with the tension between aggressive development marketing and the resulting pressures on existing community infrastructure.
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