The Political Price of Free Trade in 1889
As Washington Territory prepared for statehood, a fierce political battle erupted over how the Mills Tariff Bill would impact local timber, coal, and iron industries.
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The Democratic convention at Ellensburg endorsed a platform which, without the Mills bill, would be like the play of Hamlet with the character of Hamlet omitted. It endorsed a reduction of 15 percent on two of Washington's leading industries, and a reduction of 20 percent on another. If a Democrat were elected from this state to the House of Representatives, and two Democrats to the State Senate, their three votes would have to be cast in favor of a measure making these crushing reductions in the tariff on Washington's leading productions, or they would have to be false to the deliberately adopted platform of those to whom they would owe their election. The people of Washington will not place three of their citizens in a dilemma so cruel. There is still time for them to come out like men and in unequivocal terms repudiate the Ellensburg platform in so far as it is construed to be an endorsement of the Mills bill and the monstrous discrimination against our three greatest industries.
“The people of Washington are alive to their own interests. They will reject the Mills bill and all that it implies, as they did when they elected John B. Allen to Congress.”
In 1889, Washington was fighting for its economic identity on the national stage, wary of federal policies that threatened its timber and coal monopolies. Today, Seattle faces a similar tension as it pivots from a resource-extraction past to a global tech hub, struggling to balance national economic interests with the protection of local industry and affordability.
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