The Utopian Seattle of 1985

The electric aerial ship 'Esie,' with the Tri-State mission party on board, reached the Union depot at 8 o'clock this morning. Before making our descent, we soared above the city for half an hour. The city proper is about ten miles in length, extending from a line drawn due east and west between the Sound and Lake Washington. The city and suburbs contain a population of about 650,000, and nowhere are more than four families allowed to the acre, for the City Council of Seattle, recognizing early the fact that in a city the mortality is in direct ratio to the density of the population, lost no time in passing stringent laws to prevent overcrowding. An abundant supply of the purest water from Cedar river is brought into every house, and the sanitary police have the streets and sidewalks thoroughly washed every morning. The city was once controlled by whiskey dealers and gamblers, but after the great pandemia which swept over the country in the nineteenth century, carrying off nearly one-tenth of the population, prohibition became universal, and the liquor traffic expired. The whiskey element of Seattle, writhing in its death agony, made one more desperate effort to get into power, but by the united action of every law-abiding man and woman, this hydra-headed monster of corruption was finally and forever crushed out of existence.