The Mill Barons Who Took the Wealth and Left the Ruins
A scathing editorial in the 1877 Snohomish Sun condemns Washington Territory’s timber magnates for draining local resources while contributing nothing to schools, roads, or community development.
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 mill companies of Washington Territory are draining the country of one great source of wealth. The mill property is mostly owned in San Francisco. The owners are nearly all rich, many of them millionaires, but they invest nearly all their capital away from the Territory. They contribute little in local improvements; do not encourage farming; build no church or school houses; in fact, care little for the general prosperity of the Territory.
This 1877 critique of absentee ownership rings with modern urgency as Snohomish and the wider Puget Sound region grapple with housing affordability driven by outside investors and developers who prioritize profit over community infrastructure. The tension between local needs and external capital remains a defining feature of the Pacific Northwest's economic landscape.
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