The Hydra-Headed Monster of the Yakima Valley
A scathing indictment from 1885 reveals how the Northern Pacific Railroad's broken promises and predatory land schemes terrorized Washington frontier settlers.
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.
Mr. Williams, the second vice-president of the Northern Pacific Railroad, recently visited the Yakima Valley. The editor of the Yakima Farmer confronted him, stating: 'Our corporation has pursued a line of action which has antagonized almost every soul in the Yakima valley. It seems to have adopted the policy of 'breathing the word of promise to the ear and breaking it to the hope.' It comes among our people enriched with millions of acres of land wrongfully taken from the people by a grant, the terms of which have not been complied with. It charges cultivators of the soil exorbitant figures for odd sections which the settlers think under the charter they should have at $2.50 per acre. The object of the Government in subsidizing the road was with a view to stimulating settlement, but the policy of the company is to wait for settlers to fill up the country, so as to render the road a paying institution... and then to go through the country, disturb and in many instances ruin the values of settlers, by a program of greedy speculations in town-sites. It controls the timber trade, the coal trade, the lumber trade, the elevator business, the grain trade, beef trade, and nearly every avenue of business is made to pay homage and revenue to it. The whole country is terrorized by the multiplicity of evils continually sprung by this hydra-headed monster.'
“The whole country is terrorized by the multiplicity of evils continually sprung by this hydra-headed monster.”
This 1885 report on the Northern Pacific's land speculation and monopolistic practices mirrors modern debates about corporate influence in Seattle's housing market. Just as the Yakima settlers were priced out by railway town-site gambling, contemporary residents often find themselves fighting the same 'hydra-headed' forces of concentrated ownership and development.
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