Ex-Governor Ferry’s Case for Washington
Former Governor Elisha Ferry compares Washington’s explosive growth to California’s stagnation, arguing that railroads are the lifeblood of civic progress.
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.
San Francisco Examiner—It is now twenty-four years since I first visited San Francisco. I was then on the way to Washington territory, at that time in its infancy. In 1882 the Northern Pacific was finally completed, and there began an era of growth in the Northwest such as has never before been known. Seattle, which was then a straggling city of 5,000 or 6,000, now has a population of 60,000; Tacoma now has about 50,000; Spokane now has 30,000 people. Our population has increased from barely 150,000 to nearly half a million. If you ask me the reason for this change, I shall say, railroads. You have been content with the one which you had. We have never been contented. Out of our discontent is born progress. I undertake to say that if the people of San Francisco and California would get another railroad your population would double in five years. Conservatism kills. There must be hope and work.
“Conservatism kills. There must be hope and work. Cities grow, like children, by energy and activity, and not by idleness and inaction.”
Ferry’s boosterism highlights how central the expansion of transportation infrastructure—from railroads in the 1890s to modern transit and light rail—has been to the development of the Pacific Northwest. It frames the perpetual regional rivalry between California and Washington over who controls the trade of the Pacific.
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