Packing House Ultimatum: Repeal the Ordinance or We Move to Tacoma
Frye & Bruhn want to rebuild their slaughterhouse inside city limits and warn Seattle will lose eighty jobs to its rival if the council refuses.
The wisdom of allowing packing houses within the city limits will soon come before the city council in practical form, for Frye & Bruhn desire to rebuild their packing house and slaughter house on the Grant street bridge, but will not do so unless the council repeals the ordinance prohibiting such industries within one and three-quarters miles of Pioneer place. In explaining the firm's position yesterday Charles Frye said:
"We wish to erect a new building where the old one stands, but we will not spend any money in such an improvement if we cannot be sure that it will be allowed to remain permanently. We now employ about forty-five men, and should the city allow us to build our packing house as we propose we will employ about eighty men, all of whom support families in the city. As far as the sanitation is concerned we feel certain that no harm will ever come from our slaughter house, as we use the best of care in our work, and there cannot be any bad results in a sanitary way from a well-conducted packing house. If we cannot get what we want here we will have to move to Tacoma, where we are not hampered by such an ordinance. There we can kill right in the city, and it is the same way in all of the cities in the East. St. Paul, Chicago, Milwaukee and Omaha all have packing houses right in the thickly settled portions, and no one can state that any bad results are felt by the people. A great many hogs are being raised east of the mountains, fed on wheat, and we wish to increase our capacity, as we find a good market for pork. Two years ago we had to ship hogs in from the East, but now we can get all that we can handle in this state. We also kill cattle and sheep, all of which we shipped in here from Eastern Washington. The Palouse country ranchers raise most of the hogs, while the cattle we get from the Big Bend country. The packing industry can be a great deal of help, and Seattle will not certainly gain anything by compelling us to do our killing in Tacoma."
“If we cannot get what we want here we will have to move to Tacoma, where we are not hampered by such an ordinance.”
The fight over whether a slaughterhouse belongs inside a growing city is an old one, and the terms have barely changed: jobs and tax base on one side, air, water and property values on the other. Frye & Bruhn's threat to decamp for Tacoma is the same leverage every manufacturer has used against Seattle since — and the same argument now plays out over industrial zoning in the Duwamish and Georgetown.
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