The Iron Stranglehold on Seattle’s Waterfront
A powerful railroad uses its monopoly on transportation to freeze out competitors and strangle the city's independent growth.
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.
Seattle has awakened to the fact that the Northern Pacific Railroad has almost absolute power. While that company holds what it considers to be its own, it will not let any rival company into it. It owns the entire water front of Seattle that it wants and will not let the Canadian Pacific or any rival transportation company have proper dockage facilities, thus practically shutting out that town from the benefits of competition.
“It is a fact that the Northern Pacific Railroad has almost absolute power.”
This 1886 report on the Northern Pacific’s monopoly of the waterfront captures the city's early struggle against corporate influence—a precursor to modern debates over corporate control of public infrastructure and land-use in Seattle.
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