Seattle History
From the book; Washington - A Guide to the Evergreen State
Compiled by the Work Projects Administration in the State of Washington
Printed in 1941

Seattle is the largest city of the Pacific Northwest, and it lies along Elliott Bay, on the east shore of Puget Sound, 128 miles from the Pacific Ocean. Built on seven hills, with intervening lowlands, it extends between Puget Sound and Lake Washington, which are joined by two canals and Lake Union. It is a city of steep descents and sudden turns, with streets that fall away inevitably to the waterside, lined with docks and moored ships of every description. Many bridges, ranging from the imposing concrete George Washington Memorial Bridge to small spans straddling the ravines, pass between the different parts of this city broken by water routes.

Seattle is one of the most important import-export cities of the United States. Its rapid growth is due in a large measure to its commercially strategic location and to its terminal improvements. In 1940, four large railroad systems connected Seattle with the East and with the Southwest. Today it is the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe and the Union Pacific. Seattle's position in relation to the short "great circle" route to Asia gives it a substantial advantage in shipping over other west coast cities. Also, Alaskan shipping centers in Puget Sound ports - because of the greater degree of safety provided by the protected Inland Passage, favored this water route to Alaska from Seattle.

Local industry had depended largely upon lumber and fish, with the processing of agricultural products next in importance. Already substantially developed, manufacturing will expanded and became more diversified as full use is made of the extensive electrical power projects now under construction in the State. Approaching Seattle from the east, the route passes through the semi-wilderness of the Cascade Mountains, with their bare peaks, virgin forests, and logged-off lands; then through the foothills region, characterized by stump ranches and small dairy and poultry farms; and finally, as the land levels out into rolling cut-over lands, runs through a region of small tracts, orchards, roadhouses, camping grounds, and suburban homes—until it enters the city limits, some seven miles from the central metropolitan area.

If the approach is by water, the city is hidden from view by the projecting headlands or is only partly visible until the boat enters Elliott Bay. Once within Alki and West Points, the striking panorama of the whole city emerges, its many hills rolling upwards from the crescent-shaped shoreline of the bay. From Smith Cove at the left, north of the metropolitan area, to Alki Point at the right, runs a saw-toothed rim of piers, docks, and wharves, broken only on the south by tide flats and the Duwamish River, which forks around the man-made Harbor Island.

Beyond the waterfront and Alaskan Way, a broad commercial avenue, are the warehouses and the factories, and behind them the ragged skyline of the business area, marked by some eight or ten modern skyscrapers, which tower above the smaller business blocks. Past these are hills covered with residences and apartment houses, with here and there a wooded area where the precipitous-ness of the slope has so far prevented building. The city is impressively beautiful on a clear day, when the Olympics, with their serrated, snow-covered ridges can be seen to the west, and the Cascades, blue-green in the distance, are visible in the east and southeast, with the snowy cone of Mount Rainier looming above the other peaks of the range.

At night, too, the city is beautiful, with its myriads of lights reflected in the waters; and even in the somberness of rainy weather, when the slate-gray waters of the bay are broken by whitecaps and low clouds scud across the sky, the city does not lose its charm. The waterfront preserves the past of Seattle. In its cafes, quaint murals, the work of sign painters of an earlier day, still adorn the walls. Mirrors behind bars are encased in heavily carved wooden frames, and the shop signs of employment agencies and outfitters recall the heroic epoch of lumbering and the gold rush.

The harbor was the embryo of Seattle, and to this day the city derives its character from the wharves and its people. Broad Alaskan Way is a long sweep of activity, which subsides but does not entirely cease during the early rush of the morning. Locomotives noisily shunt their cars, and trucks rumble along the wide dock lined street. Stevedores expertly load and unload slings swung by booms and squeaking winches. Tug boats whistle petulantly, and ferries push their way in and out of the slips. Occasionally, an airplane drones overhead and swoops down to a landing on the waters of the bay. From unostentatious docks and from piers longer than any in the country, vessels depart for Alaska and Asia. And the seagulls drift out over the entire city, coming to rest everywhere, even on cornices and the spires of churches.

Seattle seems to alter its nature with each change of perspective. Physically, its vistas seem constantly shifting, as its streets move swiftly from one plane to another. Here, one sees automobiles parked on roofs of houses built on the avenue below. Board sidewalks climb the older sections of the town, where fragile frame dwellings cling to the steeps above Lake Union and gaze down upon the towers of tall apartment hotels. And socially, too, Seattle is many-angled.

For some it is a city of fashionable shops, theaters, motion picture shows, art galleries', and modern hotels and restaurants. To others it is a market and manufacturing center—and the educational and cultural capital of the State of Washington. For the mass of its employed population, it is a place where living standards are comparatively high, the environment pleasing, and the climate agreeably mild. For the itinerant and seasonal worker of logging camps, mills, canneries, and steamships, it is a city where he can hope to stretch his savings over the winter months until he lands a job when work picks up in the spring.

Seattle is a town of many races and nationalities. The early settlers were largely of native stock, but as the city grew, Scandinavians and Finns were attracted by lumbering and fishing; Irish, Italians, and peoples from the Balkan Peninsula found employment in construction and railroads, and Germans, French, and English in the various service trades, the food industry, and the professions. Among the early arrivals were also Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos, Hawaiians, and African-Americans.

Among cities of the Nation with a population of 300,000 or more, Seattle ranked third in the percentage of home ownership in 1940. As in other large communities, residence districts are distinctly differentiated here according to income groups. With the growth of the community, the better homes have steadily shifted towards the outskirts of the city, particularly to the highlands along Puget Sound and to the shores of Lake Washington. Yet those areas formerly favored by the well-to-do—First and Capitol Hills to the east of the metropolitan area, and Queen Anne Hill, the highest in the city, which looms north of Smith Cove—have not been entirely abandoned; and within a few minutes drive from the civic center many fine houses with lovely gardens and spacious lawns are still to be seen.

Scattered throughout the city are many pleasant districts inhabited by families of middle income. Free from congestion, five-to seven-room dwellings cover an unusual proportion of the city's space, and, owing to the moist and mild climate their tenants have been able to surround themselves with flowers, shrubs, trees, and grassy lawns. Cheap electricity has helped to make these homes comfortable and up-to-date. Moderately priced apartment houses and hotels loom here and there among the low roofs of the cottages.

Seattle also has its poorer districts and its slums and near-slums. In the industrial area of South Seattle, along the flats and the railroad tracks, in the sawmill district along the shore of the Lake Washington Ship Canal, and in the streets bordering on the metropolitan district are the habitations of the poor and underprivileged of Seattle. Many of these are slums, different in detail but not in character from those of the eastern cities and of Europe, crowded with unsanitary firetraps, some hastily constructed in the days immediately following the fire of 1889, others during the World War I boom days.

The rookeries and shacks immediately south of the business district house most of the city's Chinese; in the same area, rooming houses and cheap hotels provided lodging for large numbers of itinerant and seasonal laborers. Thousands of houseboats lie along the shores of Seattle's lakes, canals, and bays. Some, principally in the Lake Washington area, are commodious floating villas, with hardwood floors, electric lights, Frigidaires, and oil burners. Others are fairly comfortable dwellings.

The great majority of the water abodes are, however, substandard shacks, without equipment for sanitation, shakily constructed on the flats or on old pilings, where some float with the rising tide, then sink back to the muddy shallows. In 1940, low-cost housing units were being built to replace some of Seattle's slums, especially those of the Yesler Hill district, which had already been cleared for new construction. Only 172 years have passed since the time when the first small band of settlers dug clams along the beach and built their cabins on Alki Point.

These pioneers came to Seattle from Illinois in a covered wagon train led by Arthur A. Denny. While the main group rested in Portland, David Denny and John N. Low proceeded northward by land to Olympia, where they embarked on Puget Sound with Leander Terry and Captain Robert C. Fay on the latter's boat. On September 28, 1851, they sailed into Elliott Bay. Upon landing, they learned from Indians that a settler had taken a donation land claim a year before, near the mouth of the Duwamish River.

Captain Fay and Low soon left, but Terry and Denny set to work building a cabin on the south headland of the bay. Soon Denny wrote to his brother: "Come as soon as you can. We have found a valley that will support a thousand families." Within two months, on November 13, the other members of the party, 5 families, consisting of 12 adults and an equal number of children, arrived from Portland on the schooner Exact. The group named the point on which they settled New York, probably in the hope that some day the settlement would become the metropolis of the West. Later, with a touch of humor, they added the word Alki, Chinook jargon for "by and by," and it is this latter name which today clings to the point where the pioneers first settled.

Scarcely were the cabins finished and the families established in their new homes when the little settlement made its initial venture into what was destined to become its major industry - lumbering. Early in 1852 the brig Leonesa, seeking a cargo of piling for the San Francisco market, anchored offshore. The load she picked up was, 35,000 board feet of logs cut by the settlers from their claims, and it was the first shipment to leave Elliott Bay.

The difficulty of getting this shipment aboard in open water convinced the settlers that better facilities for water transport were needed, and that the shallow, sandy beach where they had established themselves was not suitable for the loading and unloading of ships. Accordingly, they set out to find some place where the shore sloped more steeply; and after sounding the water at various places (with Mary Denny's clothesline weighted with horseshoes), the Bell's, the Boren's, and the Denny's in February 1852, staked claims to the present site of the city, and named the new settlement Seattle after the friendly chief of the Duwamish tribe.

Other settlers soon arrived. One of these, Dr. David S. Maynard, opened the first general store, and also made a trial shipment of salmon to San Francisco. This first venture in the fish business was a dismal failure, the salmon spoiling en-route, and the commercial exploitation of this great natural resource had to await the development of better methods of preserving and speedier transportation to market. In 1852 Dr. Henry A. Smith took land near the north end of the bay on a cove which now bears his name, and where the large piers of 90 and 91 are located.

In December of the same year, Thomas Mercer arrived from Illinois with the settlement's first horse, "Old Tib," and a wagon; with these he provided the first express and milk delivery service. In the following year, on May 23, 1852 a plat of the "Town of Seattle" was filed with the Territorial government of Olympia by Boren, Denny, and Maynard. The lumbering industry in the community also took its next forward step, when Henry Yesler, from Portland, was given a tract of land along the south side of the new town, and, with the assistance of volunteer labor, built there the first steam sawmill on Puget Sound.

Social life as well as work centered around the cook-house of the mill, which was used as an all-purpose meeting house, a jail, or a church, as the occasion demanded. Another store was started by Denny, and his clerk, Dexter Horton, began to accept money for safekeeping from trappers, loggers, and sailors; his banking consisted of placing the cash in individual sacks, each tagged with the owner's name, and burying them in his "safety deposit," a coffee barrel. In 1853 the Louisiana took a cargo of ship spars for China, the first shipment from Puget Sound destined for a foreign port. When in October 1853, the Reverend David E. Blaine organized the first church, the town then was comprised 8 houses, grouped around the mill, and the total population of the county was 170. The first school was opened in 1854, the minister's wife, Catherine E. Blaine, being employed as teacher; the school term was three months, and the salary was $65 a month.

The settlers had from the first received friendly treatment from Chief Sealth, and when Isaac I. Stevens, the first Territorial Governor, called the local bands together to a powwow at "The Point" (now Pioneer Square ) and laid reservation plans before them, Chief Sealth, of the Duwamish and allied bands, proved agreeable to the proposals. Other bands, however, resented the imposition of reservations upon territory they regarded as their own, and in which they had always wandered at will.

Rumors soon followed of trouble among the Puyallup bands to the south, and outlying settlers were frightened and moved into Seattle, where in 1855 two blockhouses were erected and preparations made for defense. In December, a few settlers on White River, and Lieutenant William A. Slaughter were killed. Then, on January 26, 1856, word came that Klickitats were on the warpath and had crossed the mountains to the shores of Lake Washington. At this news, the settlers flocked to the blockhouse at the foot of Cherry Street, where, with the aid of the guns of the United States sloop-of-war Decatur, they repulsed the attackers with the loss of but two men. This was the first and last trouble in the immediate neighborhood of Seattle.

The discovery of gold on the Fraser River in Canada, in 1858, started a stampede during which 20,000 men hurried northward through Seattle. The rush resulted in a slight gain in permanent population, and in the building of a blacksmith shop, a foundry, a saloon, a hardware store, and a dance hall. At the beginning of the 1860's, Seattle was little more than a mill, a few stores, and some scattered houses. Its citizens were nevertheless determined that the town should be designated as the site of the University then proposed for the Territory.

In addition to its educational benefits, the University would stimulate real estate development, and increase the political prestige of the town. Through persistent lobbying in the Territorial legislature, Seattle succeeded in having itself chosen as the University city, and on a tract donated to the Territorial government and cleared by the townsfolk a modest wooden structure was built. In accordance with the classical tradition observed in schoolhouse architecture, the entrance had four Ionic columns.

Around the building ran a white fence, designed, according to a contemporary wag, "to keep the stumps from getting out of the yard." Asa Mercer, the new University's only instructor, canvassed the Puget Sound country in quest of students, offering young men $1.50 a cord for split wood, as a credit against tuition charges. The response was gratifying in point of numbers, but the pioneer University's study courses had to be adjusted to meet various educational levels, since only one student was discovered who qualified above high school grade.

The first number of the Seattle Gazette (now the Post-Intelligencer), a four-page weekly, was issued by J. R. Watson in 1863 from a room in the Gem Saloon. In the same year Dr. Maynard opened the first local hospital. In the following year transcontinental telegraph connections were completed, and coal mines were opened at Coal Creek (later Newcastle), this development offsetting to some extent a slump in the lumber business. John W. Pennell started a squaw dance hall, the Illahie, on the outskirts of the town, where it flourished for a number of years, despite the condemnation showered upon it by the moralists of the community.

As is usual in a frontier community, there was a scarcity of unmarried women. Of the 182 persons in the village at the beginning of 1860, 96 were bachelors. In 1864 Asa Mercer decided to intervene in this unhappy situation and went east to induce unmarried women to seek husbands in the frontier settlement. He succeeded in persuading I I women of good family to return with him. Upon the arrival of the "Mercer Girls" on May i6, the single men of the town turned out "looking like grizzlies in store clothes and their hair slicked down like sea otters." A second venture, 2 years later, brought 46 additional women, 10 of them widows. Mercer himself married one of the group.

A court order having dissolved the first incorporation of the city, Seattle was re-incorporated in 1869. In 1870 a census showed a population of 1,107 persons. That year the town elected its first Mayor, Henry A. Atkins; and Dexter Horton's coffee-barrel evolved into the town's first formal bank, occupying its first brick building, erected on the site where the Dexter Horton Building stands today. In 1870, also, the Central School was opened on Third and Marion, with two teachers and more than a couple of pupils.

This school soon became so crowded that the younger pupils had to be sent home to await the building of a second room. The new schools were constructed in time to accommodate the enrollment of 480 in the next year. The Northern Pacific Railway, then under construction, was well on its way across the continent; and town folk were hopeful that its terminus might be established at Seattle. With this expectation business doubled, population increased rapidly, valuable land, waterfront trackage, $50,000 cash, and $200,000 in bonds were pledged in support of the venture.

After months of negotiations and tense anticipation Seattle learned, however, that Tacoma had been selected as the terminal. Undaunted, the citizens of the town organized the Seattle & Walla Walla Railroad and Construction Company in 1873 and projected a line over Snoqualmie Pass. In 4 years the road had been extended to Newcastle, 12 miles away. Coal shipments quickly made the short-line profitable. The inauguration, in 1875, of regular steamship service between Seattle and San Francisco also compensated to some extent for the inadequacy of rail transport. The 1870's brought improved living conditions and more social diversions.

Gas street lights were installed in 1874. The streets were still unpaved, except for occasional short sections of cobblestones; boardwalks, however, had been laid along most of the main streets. A contemporary article on Seattle states: "It is a model pioneer city in its architecture—substantial comfort, rather than ostentatious display, being the object sought." School attendance, including that of the University, was increasing, the total enrollment at the end of the decade being nearly 800. 

In 1877 an opera company from San Francisco received such enthusiastic welcome that two opera houses were constructed; the Watson C. Squire, in 1879, and the Frye, in 1880. The performance of Emma Abbott at the opening of the Frye was a highlight in the cultural life of the town.

At the time of the census of 1880, population had risen to 3,533 This decade saw considerable industrial development. A shingle mill was built with a daily output of 200 bundles, and the machine shop of Robert Moran, several forges, and a brewery were established. In 1882 a group of businessmen organized themselves into a body similar to a Chamber of Commerce. Suffragist groups worked vigorously and won a temporary victory in 1883. In the same year Seattle was finally linked with the Puyallup Valley by the Columbia and Puget Sound Railroad, and the event was celebrated with barbecues and salmon bakes.

Speech makers toasted "Seattle—the largest town for its age in the world." Frank Osgood, a newcomer, imported four horse cars from Boston and laid tracks for the first city railway in the Territory. Frequently, one horse failed to make the pull on steep hills, and passengers had to get out and push; later, an extra "helper" horse was added on steep grades. Courts had been established, but lynchings were still carried out, occasionally, by men who had been too long without the discipline of legal institutions.

Violence also broke out in the neighborhood of Seattle against Chinese laborers who had been imported to work on the railroads and in mining camps, and who were left stranded when the lines were completed. These people worked for low wages, and during hard times other workingmen in the area saw in them a threat to their own scales of pay. Two years of agitation came to a head when mobs made an effort to deport the Chinese forcibly. Martial law was declared, and the Seattle Rifles, a forerunner of the National Guard, controlled the town for ten days.

Eventually the antagonism subsided, as the Chinese were absorbed into industry and the service trades or moved on to other towns. Cultural and social activities continued to expand. In 1888 the Ladies' Library Association was instrumental in establishing a permanent public library. In the same year the Rainier Club was formed, the first club organized in the town for the sole purpose of recreation and social activity for men. The steady growth in population led to the establishment of new newspapers and to the expansion through mergers of some of the older ones.

The Times and the Press absorbed several of the smaller papers and strengthened their influence. Eventually, the Press itself merged with the Times, which already at that date was the spokesman for conservative and industrial interests. The Gazette continued to be the leading morning newspaper. Labor, too, set up its first press in the city in 1889, the local section of the Knights of Labor sponsoring the publication of a weekly newspaper, The Workingman.

Towards the end of the 1880's, horse-drawn streetcars no longer satisfied the needs of the community, and in 1888 cable cars were introduced. During that year electric lighting had begun on a commercial scale, and streetcars too, were electrified.

The decade closed with the great fire of 1889. About 2:30 p.m., on June 6, a fire broke out in a cabinet shop at First Avenue and Madison Street. The blaze spread rapidly, and before midnight the entire business section of 50 blocks was consumed, despite the fact that aid was rushed not only from near-by Tacoma but from Olympia, and from Portland, Oregon, and Victoria, British Columbia, as well. The loss was estimated at $15,000,000. Approximately $100,000 was donated by other cities for relief work in the devastated community.

Almost at once, the rebuilding of the city in brick and iron was begun, and during the next year more than $10,000,000 was spent in reconstruction. The new city that rose upon the ashes included 465 commercial buildings, 60 wharves and warehouses, an improved sewage system, and paved streets. Wooden structures were barred in the business zones. In 1890 the population of Seattle had risen to 42,800. The nineteenth century ended in a vast boom which overrode a number of temporary setbacks.

Along the waterfront extensive shipyards were built, while from the lumber camps in the forests money came rolling into Seattle for food and supplies, and a wide traffic in raw materials, timber, fish, and minerals, left the city for distant markets. Robert Moran, who had made his start with a small machine shop and had risen to the position of mayor of the city, now took into his hands the control of one of the largest shipyards in the port. The Great Northern Railway entered Seattle from Everett in 1893, providing a new link with the East.

The city made its initial venture into municipal ownership of public utilities by purchasing the Spring Hill water supply system. The metropolitan commercial area expanded northwards, and businessmen clamored for the removal of the University from its downtown location; a site was selected on the shores of Lake Washington, and the cornerstone of the first of the new buildings, Denny Hall, was laid in 1894. The depression that struck the industrial East in 1893 causing a slump in the lumber and shipping industries of the Puget Sound region.

Many of those thrown out of work joined Coxey's march on Washington in 1894, but were stopped at Wenatchee by local law enforcement agencies. In 1896, the State was carried by Bryan and free silver; a Populist, John Rogers, was elected Governor. This same year saw the establishing of the Great Northern steamship line, which was operated until suspended because of a monopoly charged by the Federal Government. Just before the turn of the century, an unexpected stroke of luck quickened vigorously the growth of the city.

In 1897 the steamship Portland came into port with some $800,000 worth of gold from the Yukon River district in Alaska. The news of "a ton of gold" brought a feverish stampede of gold seekers, and Seattle was advertised throughout the Nation as the outfitting center and point of departure for the North Country. Seventy-four ships were launched between January and July. Old industries expanded and new ones sprang up to meet the demand for machinery, tools, camp equipment, clothing, and food stuffs. By 1905 Seattle interests had control of 95% of the total amount of Alaskan shipping. Saloons, dance halls, and gambling joints gathered in the coins of the departing and the gold dust of those who struck it rich.

The census of 1900 gave the city a population of 80,671, nearly double the figure of 1890. In the same year the first horseless carriage, an electric runabout, with a top speed of 20 miles an hour, appeared on the streets. Seattle, confident of its future, now took steps to extend its business district, cramped by the surrounding hills. The method of sluicing employed in Alaskan mining to remove hills caught the imagination of engineers and real estate promoters, and workmen began to wash away the Jackson Street and Dearborn Street hills and part of Denny Hill.

The loosened earth was used to fill in 1,400 acres of tideflats, making it available for factory sites. The venture was so successful that within the next 30 years 41,500,000 cubic yards of dirt were shifted. City traffic had become a problem with the increase of population and industry. Streets were widened and improved, and Stone and Webster, visualizing the future of the bustling city, consolidated the various street railways. Eager to establish Seattle as a shipbuilding center, businessmen and industrialists subscribed $100,000 to enable the Moran shipyards to submit the lowest bid for the construction of the U.S.S. Nebraska.

The desire for municipal ownership of utilities grew in popularity, with the result that in 1901 the city added the Cedar River watershed to its water system, and in the ensuing year installed a small generating plant which laid the basis for the City Light Department. With this modest beginning, Seattle embarked on a municipal water and electric program which grew to proud proportions during the succeeding decades. The cultural life of Seattle also reached a new level during the early years of the twentieth century.

With the aid of Carnegie funds, a large library was constructed of grey-stone (completed in 1905) to replace the small building burned in I901. The first local symphony orchestra, later re-established under the direction of Henry Hadley, gave a concert in 1903 under the leadership of Harry West; and a string quartet of exceptional merit was organized by John Spargur. University enrollment grew rapidly, and new schools, notable among them the Cornish school of fine arts, were started.

More than 200 churches and religious societies of many different denominations, including some Buddhist groups, made their appearance. The Children's Orthopedic Hospital began to operate in January 1907. The Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in 1909 drew 3,750,000 persons to Seattle, and many of them stayed at least long enough to be counted in the census of 1910, which set the city's population at 237,194. The city limits had been extended into the outlying districts and had come to include (in 1907) West Seattle, Ballard, and Columbia City and (in 1910) Georgetown — thus practically completing the present boundaries of the city.

Another transcontinental railroad, the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, arrived in 1909, and in 1910 a branch line of the Union Pacific came in from Portland, both lines operating out of the newly-constructed Union Station. The Duwamish River channel was dredged to accommodate ocean-going vessels, and water transport was further aided by the organization of the Port District by the county in 1911, and by the increase of terminals, wharves, and docks, and the digging of the Sound-to-Lake-Washington canal, 1911-16, which allowed boats to enter fresh water and be cleared of barnacles without lying at drydock.

Seattle, with a population in excess of 200,000, was now a ranking city of the Pacific Coast. As in other modern cities, civic corruption and bitter political strife flowed through the seams of the growing structure. Labor was eager and restive, and numerous clashes occurred between employers and wage earners. The hail of the I.W.W. was raided in 1913 but the organization remained active, and labor unions increased in number and membership. The workingmen of Seattle helped to build sentiment resulting in the enactment of an 8-hour day law, but this was declared unconstitutional by the State Supreme Court.

The World War carried Seattle's industrial boom to its peak. Twenty shipyards employed more than 40,000 men; commerce increased, as shipping was diverted from eastern ports because of the hazards of submarine attack; Government orders stimulated airplane construction; lumber prices soared, and sawmills ran at top capacity; wages rose and unemployment all but disappeared. The sudden influx of workers into Seattle swamped its hotels and lodging houses, and led to the construction of thousands of makeshift buildings.

In 1918, the city acquired control of the upper waters of the Skagit River and took steps to develop the hydroelectric potentialities of the Skagit. Another venture into municipal ownership was made at about the same time, when, apparently under the prodding of the War Industries Board, the city purchased the privately-owned street railway system at a war time price of $15,000,000. The end of the first world war was followed by a collapse in the lumber market, a drop in agricultural prices, the falling off or diversion of trade, and the dosing down of the war industries.

Unemployment and wage cuts led to labor unrest, which culminated in a five-day general strike, the first in the United States. More than 60,000 union members were involved in the walkout, which started on February 6, 1919. The authority of the strike committee and the self-discipline of the strikers prevented disorder, and there was little disruption of essential services. Negotiations led to the return of the workers to their jobs. The financial collapse of 1929 struck Seattle a hard blow, as it did all other cities of the country.

The decline of the lumber industry cut off the trade coming from the small environing towns. Unemployment became a persistent burden, of which the city was forced to carry a large share. Several major strikes occurred, including waterfront strikes in 1934 and 1936, the timber workers' strike of 1935, and the Newspaper Guild strike of 1936. The labor movement gained in membership, and both the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations set up central labor councils. The unemployed formed leagues, and the old people turned to group action to obtain Government pensions. As usual, the impact of social and economic issues upon local politics led to spirited contests, frequently misunderstood by outsiders.

Though production and commerce still lagged behind their capacities, Seattle showed considerable recovery and progress, despite the depression. In 1936 waterborne commerce attained a tonnage of 6,307,265 tons, valued at $909,562,467. The city had one of the finest municipal power systems in the United States. Whatever the future may have in store for it, Seattle gives ample evidence that it will meet its destiny vigorously and with the assurance of triumph, Alki, by and by.