Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle
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Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle

John C. Putman

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Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle

John C. Putman

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This book traces the interplay of class, gender, and politics in progressive-era Seattle, Washington during the formative period of industrialization and the establishment of a national market economy. With the rapid westward expansion of the capitalist marketplace by the dawn of the 20th century, national political and economic pressures significantly transformed both city and region. Despite the region's vast natural resources, the West had a highly urbanized population, surpassing even that of the industrial Northeast. Westerners celebrated the region's wide-open spaces, and even though a large part of the West's economy was centered in the mines, fields, and forests, most chose to live in the city. Cities thus witnessed the intersection of class, gender, and political reform as residents struggled to <br>

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Year
2008
ISBN
9780874177435

CHAPTER 1

Class, Gender, and Politics in Late-Nineteenth-Century Seattle

Early one Sunday morning in February 1886, several hundred white working-class men and women gathered in the Chinese district in Seattle. On the pretense of enforcing local health regulations, they pounded on doors, summarily condemned buildings, and strongly suggested that all Chinese leave the city. The teamsters among the throng of white workers then hauled the outcasts’ belongings to a nearby dock where the Queen of the Pacific prepared to weigh anchor for its regular run to San Francisco. By the end of the morning approximately 350 Chinese residents—some frightened and others defiant—huddled together at the foot of the Queen’s gangplank. The workers and others who milled around the docks then passed the hat to raise the seven dollars per head demanded by the ship’s captain to transport the Chinese to California. Despite authorities’ promises to protect them, nearly all the weary Chinese hostages chose to take advantage of the offer to leave Seattle. However, the Queen of the Pacific had room for only 200 passengers; when it set sail for San Francisco, it left roughly 185 Chinese residents behind.1
Up to this point, the anti-Chinese crowd had largely avoided direct violence. Had the ship had room for all those forced to the docks, perhaps this event would have quietly come to a close. Yet it was the question of what to do with the remaining Chinese that divided Seattle residents. George Venable Smith, one of the leaders of the anti-Chinese crowd, suggested that the Chinese remain at the wharf until another steamer arrived a few days later. Local militia officers, however, overruled him and decided to escort the Chinese back to their residences in the Lava Bed district. At the corner of Main and Commercial, workers who had not been at the docks—and thus may have been unaware that the Queen had no more room—closed ranks and impeded the militia. Exact details of this confrontation vary, but it is clear that an unarmed logger objected to the return of the Chinese, and when one of the guards attempted to arrest him, a scuffle occurred and five men were shot, the logger fatally. By nightfall, a proclamation of martial law by the territorial governor and the dispatch of federal troops a day later concluded the opening chapter of a momentous event in Seattle’s early history.2
The February riot, in many ways, marked the beginning of modern Seattle history. During the next several decades, labor emerged as a major actor in the social, economic, and political life of the city. With the simultaneous enfranchisement of women during this period, Seattle politics in the late 1880s looked like no other in the entire nation. By the 1890s, however, a fragile political moment had unraveled with the revocation of equal suffrage and the disarray and disillusionment of the city’s radical community—two outcomes that were not mutually exclusive. In this time of rapid social and economic change, Seattle witnessed class-based coalitions that supplanted past political factions shaped by cultural issues such as prostitution and temperance. It would be a mistake, however, to confine the importance of these events to Seattle alone. Seattle’s experiences in the late nineteenth century speak to several significant issues that dominate the landscape of American history, including the growing significance of class politics, the role of race in shaping class relations, and the increasing presence of the state in the relations between capital and labor. Yet, the presence and actions of enfranchised women in Seattle during the 1880s both distinguished this experience from California’s anti-Chinese events as well as foreshadowed the tremendous impact of gender politics in early-twentieth-century America.
Settled by a small band of midwestern migrants who ventured to Puget Sound in 1852 in search of a good harbor and abundant land, Seattle quickly became home to a timber industry that would shape the city’s economy for decades to come.3 The Sound emerged as an early source of lumber for San Francisco merchants, despite the great distance, because it offered safe, deep harbors. The region’s promise attracted many entrepreneurs to the Puget Sound, including the father of Seattle’s lumber industry, Henry Yesler. Yesler ventured to Puget Sound in the early 1850s to build a steam-driven lumber mill. When he arrived in Seattle he discovered that founding settlers Arthur A. Denny and C. D. Boren had already claimed much of the waterfront. However, Denny and his fellow pioneers saw in Yesler’s plans just what Seattle needed—a viable industry. Not willing to let his entrepreneurial spirit slip away, the local leaders rearranged their property holdings so as to give Yesler a narrow strip of land running perpendicular to the coast that expanded to a larger holding in the nearby timber lands. Yesler’s mill promised a prosperous and bright future for their new community.4
Despite the area having a population of only approximately four thousand, excluding Indians, Congress approved a request for territorial status for what was then the northern portion of the Oregon Territory in May 1853. By 1880, more than twenty-five years after Arthur Denny had paddled his canoe up Puget Sound, Seattle seemingly had changed little. The economy expanded in size as the lumber industry reached further inland to the vast forests of Puget Sound and new mills dotted Seattle and the other small coastal communities. Despite this growth, the city’s local economy and businesses overwhelmingly depended, directly or indirectly, on the lumber industry. Likewise, the region’s working class also changed little, as most workers harvested trees in nearby forests or labored in the local mills refining and processing the lumber for shipment. The 1880s, however, brought countless and profound changes to the city. Without a doubt the foremost engine of change was the completion of the Northern Pacific Railway (NP) which transformed the local and regional economy, tying it into a truly national market. The railroad carried not only new goods but also new people and ideas to the once isolated Sound. The instability and unpredictability that characterized the national marketplace would also describe Seattle in the late nineteenth century.5
In the 1870s the Northern Pacific, under the leadership of eastern financier Jay Cooke, began to construct a transcontinental railroad that would link Lake Superior to the Pacific Northwest. Overspeculation, shady dealings, and Cooke’s ego combined to crack the shaky foundation on which he had built the NP. A depression stalled further construction of the railroad until a German immigrant, Henry Villard, reorganized and finally completed the NP, tying the Great Lakes to the Puget Sound in the mid-1880s.6
The primary terminus for the NP on the Pacific was not Seattle but nearby Tacoma. The choice of Tacoma over Seattle in 1873 could easily have erased Seattle from the map, yet from this loss the city grew more determined to reclaim its supremacy on Puget Sound. In the early 1870s, the NP’s directors encouraged Puget Sound cities to vie for the lucrative terminus of this transcontinental railroad. In terms of infrastructure and financial resources, Tacoma had little to offer. Yet it was precisely the lack of both significant development and an entrenched elite to block Cooke’s efforts that enticed him to place the NP’s terminus in Tacoma. In short, Tacoma could be Cooke’s town. Nevertheless, Seattle’s officials continued to up the ante for the terminus by offering the NP $250,000 in cash and bonds, some 7,500 town lots, 3,000 acres of undeveloped land, and approximately one-half of the waterfront.7
The decision to build the terminus in Tacoma engendered two important responses from Seattle residents. First, it marked the beginning of anti-eastern sentiment in Seattle. Local citizens were quite upset by this decision and soon recognized that forces back East had great power and control over their lives. Episodes like this one have often encouraged historians of the West to argue that, in terms of its economy, the West was little more than a colony of the East. Second, Seattle’s leading businessmen realized that the NP’s choice of Tacoma threatened their city’s vitality, and they responded by attempting to build their own railroad over the Cascade Range to Walla Walla in the eastern part of the territory. The railroad’s proponents floated their own stock locally, and despite community picnics and turns at the pick and shovel, the railroad made it only a few miles out of town. The Seattle and Walla Walla line, however, did reach the excellent coal fields of eastern King County. In the end this little community railroad would help expand Seattle’s control over its Puget Sound hinterland by directing economic activity through its port.8
Prior to the economic boom of the 1880s, the lumber industry, and to a lesser extent the coal fields east of the city, drove Seattle’s economy. Territorial figures for 1870 reveal that $1.3 million of the total $1.9 million invested in Washington’s manufacturing was in lumbering. Likewise, two-thirds of total manufacturing wages ended up in the pockets of sawmill workers. Within a few years a fleet of small steam vessels based in Seattle, commonly referred to as the “Mosquito Fleet,” carried goods to and from Seattle and the Sound’s other ports, making the city the central supply depot for the region. By 1875, the city also established its first regular steamship service to San Francisco. The mid-1870s brought bad economic times to the entire nation, the Pacific coast included. Seattle, however, fared better because the demand for its coal in California remained firm and its aborted railroad in the coal fields increased the profitability of many local mining operators.9
The Northern Pacific’s laying of its final rail in the mid-1880s stimulated economic growth throughout the Pacific Northwest. Seattle’s two key industries—timber and coal—benefited greatly from the line’s expansion. Railroad construction strengthened the demand for lumber in the form of railroad ties; the growth of the iron horse in the West whetted the industry’s appetite for the region’s coal. The NP also opened new markets for Seattle businesses and further expanded the region’s economy. Washington’s lumber industry in 1879, for example, produced approximately one-half as much as California’s, but within a decade its production outstripped the Golden State’s by nearly twofold. Seattle likewise witnessed an explosion of new sawmill construction and the updating of many older factories. In particular, more and more mills focused on shingle manufacturing, making the Seattle suburb of Ballard the world’s largest producer of shingles by the 1890s. Finally, new industries and businesses arose to feed the railroad market and the growing local demands of the rapidly urbanizing community of Seattle. Iron foundries, machine shops, a street railroad, and even an infant telephone company sprang up during the decade.10
While the railroad offered prosperity, eastern consumer goods, and closer ties with the rest of the nation, it also brought vast numbers of people who seemed significantly different—socially, culturally, and racially—from earlier settlers. By the end of the 1880s, Seattle no longer was the sleepy hamlet about which Denny and his pioneer friends so fondly reminisced. The city’s population swelled by 1200 percent, growing from about 3,500 residents to more than 42,000 by the end of the decade. Workers, skilled and unskilled, journeyed west both to help build the new railroads and to take advantage of the higher real wages that western cities such as Seattle offered. In particular, the NP brought to the Sound many more single young men whose ancestors harked from Ireland, Italy, and Sweden. As late as 1900, 64 percent of the Seattle residents were male. Seattle, as the Sound’s main commercial center, attracted many of these young rootless men during the cold wet winter months to partake of various pleasures found in the city’s red-light district. The significance of Seattle’s economic development, however, lies not so much in its contours as in its pace. While Seattle’s economic development proceeded in much the same manner as in the East, “changes which took a century or more on the Atlantic seaboard were concentrated into a generation or less on Puget Sound.”11 Such rapid growth quickly tested the ability of Seattle’s citizens to cope with its consequences.
Excited by the city’s potential, yet alarmed by some of the effects, many Seattle citizens stepped up their efforts to exorcise what they perceived as the negative consequences of rapid economic growth. In the fall of 1880, anti-liquor forces united to form the Territorial Temperance Alliance and soon turned to government to curb drinking. Within a year, the Temperance Alliance had successfully lobbied for both a Sunday closing law and a measure that made saloonkeepers liable for injuries attributable to liquor sold in their taverns. In 1883, anti-alcohol forces declared a week in July “Temperance Week,” during which ministers expounded upon the evil of alcohol and the necessity for good Christians to work actively to eliminate it. The Temperance Alliance not only condemned alcohol and extolled temperance, but also suggested that woman suffrage could provide temperance forces the political leverage to achieve their goals.12 Temperance advocates firmly believed that the battle for the life and soul of Seattle was at hand. In early November, the territorial legislature greatly aided their cause by passing a bill granting suffrage to women, which Governor William Newell proudly signed into law.13
The governor’s signature ended a twelve-year battle that had begun with Susan B. Anthony’s western visit in 1871. Anthony told a Seattle audience gathered at a local church that women would use their vote against intemperance and the growing social evil of prostitution. In addition, with the ballot in their hands, women could also protect their property and wages.14 Much of the credit for securing the vote must be given to Abigail Scott Duniway, who led suffrage forces both in her home state of Oregon and in neighboring Washington Territory. Duniway not only invited Anthony to the Pacific Northwest, but also accompanied her throughout her travels to the far reaches of Washington’s frontier. In 1873, the Oregonian suffragist began publishing her own newspaper, the New Northwest, which not only helped spread her thoughts on suffrage and women’s rights, but also facilitated communication among women throughout the region. By the mid-1870s, woman suffrage and temperance entered public discourse, influencing both local and state politics for much of the next two decades.15
Washington’s equal suffrage triumph, however, extended well beyond the waters of Puget Sound. Nationally, the woman’s suffrage movement had limped along following the movement’s split into two competing organizations. While the territories of Utah and Wyoming had granted suffrage to women soon after the Civil War, their importance to the suffrage movement was limited because, in the words of a national suffrage periodical, one had “a very exceptional population and the other a very small one.” Washington, however, was a much larger and growing territory that was greater in land size than most eastern states. The national suffrage magazine Woman’s Journal announced that “while the East lags behind on this great question of equal rights, the young, progressive West leads the way.” The magazine also applauded “the brave, true young men of the West” for this progressive move. Suffragists throughout the nation thus looked to Washington Territory as a source of pride, hope, and inspiration for further action in their respective states.16
The rapid expansion of gambling, prostitution, and saloons to meet the needs of the city’s burgeoning young male population spurred Seattle women to exercise their voting power. Despite the threat to the city’s economy, a group of concerned citizens formed a new political organization in early 1884 to confront the vice lords and various illicit activities. Composed of newly enfranchised women and like-minded men, the Law and Order League nominated a slate of candidates for the upcoming municipal elections. Worried businessmen quickly responded with a Businessmen’s ticket that advocated “reasonable regulation” of vice that would not undermine the local economy. Support for the Businessmen’s ticket came from many of the city’s most influential and powerful business leaders, including territorial governor Elisha P. Ferry, Henry Yesler, and other local entrepreneurs who declared that the “corner-stone of the business prosperity of the cities of this coast rests on the saloons, the gambling houses and the houses of prostitution; these are woven and inter-woven with every branch of business. When you strike them, you strike at the business interests of the whole community.”17 The municipal elections ended in a draw, the Businessmen’s ticket capturing the mayor’s seat but the remaining offices equally divided. Seattle’s residents seemed to be sending a message that they wished to find some middle ground between the new Sodom and Gomorrah that an unfettered business elite might create and the economic prosperity that drew them to their western promised land.18
Much to the chagrin of their detractors, Seattle women crowded the city’s polling places during the 1884 elections. The Evening Telegram declared: “Away go two old assertions against Woman Suffrage, that women will not vote if they have the opportunity, and that they will be insulted if they make the attempt.”19 Not only did Seattle women proudly march to the ballot box, but some, like Mrs. Laura E. Hall, hitched up their horses and shuttled women back and forth to the polls all day. Others congregated around the polls, encouragi...

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