The Seattle Daily Intelligencer’s Panic Over 'The Vagrant Horde'
As property crime spiked in Portland, Seattle’s newspaper urged citizens to arm themselves and remain vigilant against a 'vagrant class' they believed was sweeping the Pacific Northwest.
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.
We cannot hope to escape an incursion of the vagrant horde that now infests the city of Portland, and are committing all sorts of excesses there. Already we may consider the vanguard of this obnoxious element upon us, and therefore it behooves our citizens to be on their guard. The Portland papers have recently teemed with accounts of their rapacity and daring outrages. A store was entered in broad daylight, on one of the principal streets, by a trio of villains, the proprietor knocked down with a bar of iron, and the establishment robbed of $1,600 in coin and from one to two thousand dollars worth of jewelry. These are the representatives of a vagrant class, who are at present a source of grave danger to the whole northwest. They are of the worst and most vicious class of criminals, educated and graduated in crime. They come not from the ranks of working men or the great army of the industrious unemployed. It is idle to claim that they will disappear at the dawn of returning prosperity. To them, all kinds of vice has become a sweet fascination, and they take to it as kindly as a duck to water. It is the duty of our city officials to keep a vigilant lookout for them, and at all hazards keep the vagrant element thoroughly weeded out of our city. In this way we shall nip the evil in the bud. Our citizens should also be doubly on their guard, and we would suggest the propriety of ever having at hand a good six-shooter in the house.
“To them, all kinds of vice has become a sweet fascination, and they take to it as kindly as a duck to water.”
In 1878, Seattle’s editorial elite framed transient populations as an invading 'vulture' class, a rhetoric that mirrors contemporary anxieties regarding homelessness and public safety in Seattle. While the era’s proposed solution—arming private citizens and 'weeding out' the poor—remains a hallmark of 19th-century frontier governance, the underlying tension over urban growth and the 'unwanted' in the city persists in today’s political discourse.
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