The Seattle-Walla Walla Rail Ambition
An 1877 editorial proposes leveraging global capital gluts to fund the critical narrow-gauge railway connection, a lifeline for the territory's economic future.
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.
A consequence of the general prevalence of peace and prosperity throughout the earth and the slackening of enterprise in the United States for the past few years has been the rapid ingorgement of capital in the vaults of European capitalists. The rate of discount at the Bank of England for some time past has been down to 2 percent per annum, and yet the accumulation of bullion in that bank has run up to nearly 175,000,000 of our money. Some British banks have recently made discounts at the merely nominal rate of three-fourths of one percent per annum, which is the next thing to furnishing the use of money gratuitously. The moral of this circumstance is that the present is an exceptionally favorable time for securing the necessary capital for the rapid prosecution of some of our necessary enterprises of public utility. Such an expenditure of some of this idle and now useless bullion would be of reciprocal advantage. The investment of several millions of it in completing our Seattle and Walla Walla narrow-gauge railroad, for example, would be a mutual benefit to all parties concerned—helping the capitalists themselves as well as the people of both sections of this Territory out of their dilemmas.
“The investment of several millions of it in completing our Seattle and Walla Walla narrow-gauge railroad... would be a mutual benefit to all parties concerned.”
In 1877, Seattle leaders looked to international banking gluts to solve the isolation of inland trade, mirroring today’s ongoing regional struggle to fund critical infrastructure and light rail expansion amidst volatile capital markets.
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