The Price of Growth: How Seattle’s Economy Faced the Boom and Bust of 1877
A look back at the financial anxieties and rapid development of 1877 Seattle, as the young city navigated the transition from frontier town to an emerging regional market.
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.
There is a diametrical contrast between the financial conditions of old and new countries. The old have a surplus of money and people—the new, a dearth of these and of the wealth that consists in articles of artificial creation, but a greater abundance of natural wealth. As long as we have unappropriated lands to pay for, mills and mines to develop, and natural resources to absorb the wealth of immigration like a sponge, money must be at a heavy premium. The signs of the times indicate a changing regime in this regard. This decline in interest rates is not so noticeable on the Pacific Coast as in the East; and yet there has been a change steadily going on as great in proportion. The law of supply and demand is universal in its operation in financial as well as in other matters; and there is a telegraphic sympathy extending through all the money markets of the world. The present gratifying monetary condition is, however, largely attributable to the sound position of the Government, so boldly taken and so firmly maintained of a speedy restoration of the gold and silver currency.
“As long as we have unappropriated lands to pay for, mills and mines to develop, and natural resources to absorb the wealth of immigration like a sponge, money must be at a heavy premium.”
In 1877, Seattle was a raw frontier town preoccupied with interest rates, foreign capital, and the scarcity of local liquidity—much like today’s anxieties over venture capital and housing affordability. The 'telegraphic sympathy' the editorial describes as connecting global markets was the 19th-century version of our modern globalized economy, where small-town economic health remains inextricably tied to distant financial shifts.
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