Yakima Signal Denounces 50-Million-Acre Northern Pacific Land Grant
A scathing editorial accuses President Arthur of abusing executive authority to grant fifty million acres of public land to a powerful railroad monopoly before the road was actually finished.
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.
The Yakima Signal denounces an executive act which in one fell swoop gives away fifty million acres of public land to the Northern Pacific Railroad. The act stipulated that whenever the road should be completed in order within a given period, the President of the United States should appoint commissioners to examine and accept the road on the part of the government. No one who ever read the act would seriously dispute that time was the essence of the entire agreement. It is well known that President Arthur has no lawful authority to accept any part of this road completed at this late day. He knows that in hurrying commissioners out to Yakima and having them hovering around in snowy weather, in order to have them on the ground the moment the road is finished, he is not serving the people in accordance with his oath of office, but is truckling in an assembly manner to the wishes of the grasping land-grabbing speculators. He knows that these speculators forfeited all legal and just claims to this land, and he is prostituting his high office by trying to forestall the adjudication which has the question of forfeiture under present consideration. This is just such practices that have brought the Republican party into disrepute and brought it to the threshold of defeat.
“He knows that these speculators forfeited all legal and just claims to this land, and he is prostituting his high office by trying to forestall the adjudication.”
This 1884 editorial reflects a recurring theme in Washington’s history: the tension between corporate monopolization of natural resources and the public interest. Much like the 19th-century fights over transcontinental railroad land grants, Seattle residents today grapple with the influence of major developers and tech corporations on local housing and land-use policy.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.