The Great Land Grab: Congress’s Failure to Hold the Northern Pacific Accountable
A scathing editorial from 1886 demands legislative accountability as Congress fails to reclaim land granted to the Northern Pacific Railroad.
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 recent session of the national legislature has been, all in all, a failure. The country has not been benefited by it, and Washington Territory has her own little complaint to make against it, because her modest request that her citizens might be allowed to the homesteads guaranteed to them by the Constitution was rejected with scorn. The Northern Pacific Railroad Company may continue to possess, to use and to sell, not only the lands contiguous to the line which it did not build within the required time, but also those areas contiguous to the line which it has not yet built and those contiguous to the line which it never expects to build. The longer proper legislation on this subject is delayed, the worse it will be for the corporations. If there is any one sentiment growing in this country, it is the sentiment which demands the protection of the public domain, which demands that the corporations to which the lands of the people have been so lavishly given be held to a strict accountability. The handwriting on the wall can be seen in the action of both the Senate and the House on the Northern Pacific bill. He who fails to read it is either blind or he is a fool.
“The longer proper legislation on this subject is delayed, the worse it will be for the corporations. The handwriting on the wall can be seen... He who fails to read it is either blind or he is a fool.”
This 1886 editorial highlights the historic tension between public land access and corporate land grants, a power struggle that resonates deeply in modern Seattle. Much like the 19th-century debate over railroad monopolies, today's residents continue to wrestle with how corporate developers and concentrated land ownership shape the affordability and accessibility of housing in the Pacific Northwest.
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