The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, April 5, 1917, Page 12

- 3 A BC o ¥ n e b il W D Tt — Seattle’s G reat Fiferprises Achieved Only After A Long Struggle - The general office building of the Seattle Port commission from the land side. It is located at the Bell street public wharf. GENERATION ago the peo- prle owned the water front at Seattle, Wash. The title was vested in the state of Wash- ington. . In 1913 the people voted $6,000,000 in bonds for the erec- tion of a grain elevator, cold storage plants, wharves, ferries and ware- houses. The purpose. was the estab- lishment of publicly owned terminals to drive the unnecessary toll takers from the market place. To carry out this plan the people, through their Port commission, had to obtain shore lands and tide lands on which to erect their public utilities. The Port com- mission found that not a foot of the shore of Seattle harbor, which all be- longed to the people 20 or 30 years ago, remained in the public's hands. It had all passed into private control through deed and long-time leases given by the state of Washington for a song. v The people by condemnation pro- ceedings and purchase had to buy back water front rights that their govern- ment a few years before had practi- cally given away to the railroads and other private corporations and to land speculators. A hold-up game on a grand scale was organized. The in- A “wind jammer” tied up at one of the Seattle public wharves to discharge cargo. Hundreds of this class of ves- sels, owned by small independent lines or by their own captains get the same deal at the public wharves as the big ships of the great steamer lines. ~ R. MORRIS in a previous article deseribed the extensive M publicly owned terminal facilities at Seattle, Wash., and told something of the conditions that existed before and after the people got control'of the water front and erected cold storage plants, warehouses, wharves, and a grain elevator by voting a $6,000,000 bond issue. In the present article he tells how the people obtained these publicly owned utilities, and the fight put up by selfish private interests to block them. It is a fight of the people of one city and county against the united and organized exploiters of a whole state, and how, under a faith- ful leader they persisted through several defeats until they won the entire state to their aid, and put the stamp of state approval on public ownership. The views shown in this issue were all taken by the author, and serve to picture to the mind, better than many words, the extent to which public ownership has en- tered into developing the fourth seaport of the United States. terests that controlled the water front and that levied toll on everything that went over the wharves, was of course opposed to public ownership and particularly to public ownership that threatened to break the monopoly of the terminal facilities. They held out for fabulous prices. They determined to make the people pay dear for public utilities. Land on the waterfront that was actually vacant—not in use—and which had been obtained from the state at a few hundred dollars an acre cost the Port commissions $50,000 an acre when the people had to buy it back. BUT THE PUBLIC HAS TO PAY One little piece of land that a rail- road had purchased from the state for $600, together with a tide land lease till 1928, that the company had obtain- ed from the state at $90 a year, cost the people $72,000,” or at the rate of over a million dollars an acre, when the Port commission bought it back for public use. The Seattle chamber of commerce, when big industries and railroads con- templated locating terminals or fac- tories on the Pacific coast, had been known to buy up and furnish free sites for such private enterprises, in order / to get them for Seattle. At least the chamber’s influence was always used in such cases to obtain reasonable prices for industries locating at Seat- tle. But no such effort was made by the chamber when the people proposed establishing great industries and terminal facilities. In fact the chamber of commerce became the most bitter opponent of the public terminal pro- Ject. The Port commission had to spend $1,500,000, or 25 per cent of its bond issue, for shore land and tide land on which to erect the utilities that were destined to make Seattle a free port and raise it in five years from the twenty-second to the fourth port in importance in the United States. BUSINESS MEN UNITE AGAINST FREE PORT This gives only a faint idea of the difriculties the people had to overcome in their fight for free terminals and a free market place. When I heard the story of the fight from the lips of the men who went through it, it seemed incredible to me that this wonderful system of public utilities .exists today. It has been a fight not only against the railroads and other interests that con- trolled water front in the old days. Enemies of publicly owned port facilities in Seattle whooped it up for an $8,000,000 bond issue, and by a cunning publicity cam- paign, false wording on the ballot and con- nivance of land speculators, tried to divert $5,000,000 for privately owned terminals. Those interests one would expect to find arrayed against publicly owned facilities that would smash their con- trol. But it was a fight also against the chamber of commerce and the combined business interests of the city, who lined up with their fellow profit takers who dominated the water front. And it was a fight against the powerful newspapers of the city. The two big papers of the city, tife Times and Post-Intelligencer, not only fought the project at its inception, but are fighting it yet. A united people, led by a few strong, fearless and incor- ruptible men, is the reason for the success that has been obtained. Public ownership "of the terminal facilities at Seattle began to be a pos- sibility in 1909, by which time the agitation for it had developed a strong sentiment among the people. The legislature of Washington early in ¥911, urged by this sentiment, passed an act permitting the organization of Port districts by port cities and the issuance of bonds, a debt against such districts, for the acquirement of shore and tide lands and the erection and operation of public terminal facilities. ' HATCH PLOT TO SELL OUT THE PEOPLE As early as 1910 the great special in- terests—Big Business and its lesser satelliteis—determined to defeat the plan. The plot hatched was most in- This picture shows that nobody is left in doubt as to who owns and con- trols the terminal facilities at Seattle built'by a bond issue of the people. 1 1 o 4