The 1876 Plea to Ditch the City for the Soil
Amidst economic stagnation in a young Seattle, a local editorial poem urges the 'idle clerks' and unemployed of the city to trade their pens for plows.
The streets are filled with idle clerks, / The times, the times are dull; / And he his duty plainly shirks— / When shops and mills are full. / Works to learn a trade, or tend / The counter of a store, / In hope the future yet will vend / A fortune to his door. / But ah, vain are all such myths, / That surely end in harm, / Do not seek to fill the mouth shady trade— / 'Go work upon a farm.' / Oh why should men in pain / Or idly stay in town? / Why loaf about and crossly whine / That things are upside down? / Can this bring bread to wife and child, / And the future bright / Can this turn the weather mild, / Or furnish heat and light? / Come such men should listen to my song, / And in it find a charm: / It tells them how to get along / To work upon a farm.
“The streets are filled with idle clerks, / The times, the times are dull; / And he his duty plainly shirks— / When shops and mills are full.”
This 1876 editorial reflects a perennial Seattle anxiety about the instability of urban commerce versus the perceived 'honest' reliability of land. Just as laborers were urged to leave the city during the post-Civil War recession, modern residents continue to debate whether the city's high-cost service economy is sustainable for the working class.
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