The Original Seattle Growth Strategy

We give place to-day to a very pointed communication from a newcomer who propounds the query whether the merchants and business men of Seattle would not contribute enough by private subscription, in the absence of any public provision for the purpose, to sustain an office for sending abroad such information concerning our country as is desired by intending immigrants. It is true that there is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune. As immigration is the life blood of new States, the present is the harvest time for our Territory if it were but alive to its own interests, while the thousands of home-seekers are solicitous to find more propitious surroundings than can be found in grasshopper-stricken Kansas or drought-parched California. It is a fact that Washington Territory offers superior inducements in respect to climate, soil, health, certainty of crops, timber, water, and commercial equilibrium to any other unappropriated portion of the Union. It would be an easy task to collect the facts in pamphlet form and place them in the hands of the eager questioners. Hundreds of letters of inquiry come to our citizens and business houses every month, desiring answer in detail. This involves in the aggregate a great amount of labor. The proposed office and printed information could do all this more promptly, more thoroughly, and more economically than it can otherwise be done. In brief, the effort would pay.