The Railroad 'Boom' That Never Arrived
A scathing editorial accuses the Northern Pacific Railroad of building phantom infrastructure to avoid government forfeiture of their land grants.
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 Portland Standard and this journal agree: the Northern Pacific Railroad's recent activities on the Cascade branch are a facade. The whole work now being done is merely to make a show of good faith to postpone or defeat the forfeiture bill pending in Congress. The force currently employed on that section could not complete it in a hundred years. The company has never intended to build the branch until compelled to do so by legislation or competition. Its broken pledges stand like mile stones along the route of its railroad from Duluth to its present terminus. The program now is to defeat the forfeiture bill, then claim additional land grants by building short coal road segments. The talk about the speedy completion of the Cascade branch is insincere and intended to beguile the public.
“From the first the Northern Pacific Railroad Company has dealt in dishonesty, subterfuge and chicanery.”
This editorial captures the deep public cynicism toward major corporate developers during Seattle's early growth. The battle between the 'boosterism' of the railroad and the reality of the stalled Cascade line was a defining economic anxiety for residents in the 1880s.
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