The Secret Scheme to Seize the Tide Flats
Prominent Seattle businessmen form an organization to lobby the constitutional convention for control of the waterfront.
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.
It has long been known that there exists a strong organization to bring influential pressure upon the members of the constitutional convention to induce them to put the interests of the tide-flat grabbers before those of the people. They realize the day for decided action has arrived. A secret circular sent by this organization to all owners of tide-flat property, and published in the Post-Intelligencer, is self-condemnatory. It claims that millions of dollars worth of shore property is in jeopardy—in danger of being confiscated by the state to the irreparable injury of the private and industrial interests of Western Washington. This is an impudent assumption. The tide-flat grabbers have things twisted; the very object of their organization is to secure a constitutional endorsement of their own seizure of the property of the state and of the people. They charge the state with an intention to confiscate that which is its own, while they grow strong in the enjoyment of that which is not their own.
“They charge the state with an intention to confiscate that which is its own, while they grow strong in the enjoyment of that which is not their own.”
This 1889 clash over the ownership of Seattle's tidelands laid the foundation for the city's port and industrial district. Today's debates over waterfront access and the privatization of public land are modern echoes of these same Gilded Age battles.
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