The Curse of the Golden Calf: Seattle’s Economic Anxiety in 1877
As banks tightened their grip on local capital, a Seattle editor warned that hoarding wealth—rather than investing in local industry and homes—was a dangerous path to ruin.
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.
Philosophers have always disagreed as to what constitutes the highest human good. But the inevitable effect of exalting one species of wealth above all others is to produce disorder and real distress. The apostles of land in England produce, as is natural, the fruits of the transfer of the estates of the realm into the hands of the aristocracy, with the consequent oppression and suffering of the starving masses. Money is not wealth. Only its representative gold is a form of wealth, but of less importance to the human race than land, or bread, or coal, or iron, or wood, or wool. The anomaly which the country presents at this time of people out of employment by thousands and starving for food while the banks are surcharged is a symptom of internal disease. We have lately witnessed the fact of saving banks refusing to take more deposits on the ground of inability to invest to advantage. This circumstance should admonish money-makers to endeavor to invest their surplus earnings in channels that will be productive—where it will aid in opening new farms in the 'common;' in starting new manufactories; or in developing new mines and mills. The policy of hoarding and concentrating money is bound to prove ruinous if persevered in. It is the curse of the age. Ten years hence, there would be more money in the banks and safes as well as in the pockets of the people in consequence of a judicious 'scattering abroad' in carrying out enterprises of railroad building, colonization, land reclamation and development of factories and mills.
“The policy of hoarding and concentrating money... is bound to prove ruinous if persevered in. It is the curse of the age.”
In 1877, Seattle faced a 'Panic' era where capital flight and bank hoarding left residents jobless and hungry. Today's headlines mirror this 150-year-old anxiety, as Seattleites grapple with wealth concentration, the erosion of the middle class, and the struggle to turn investment capital into tangible local development and housing.
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