Document 126: Excerpts from Promotional Booklet
Compiled by A. S. Allen, "The City of Seattle" (Seattle: Seattle Chamber of Commerce, c. 1900).
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Seattle believes in expansion, and it practices what it believes. It is a city expanding in area, in population, in wealth, in influence....With Alaska besides, with the opening of Asia to the commerce of the world, with the acquisition of the Hawaiian and Philippine Islands by the United States, the field and the possibilities have been enormously extended....
Seattle is rapidly becoming great. New sawmills, packing houses, factories, are continually coming to it....Many lines of trade have gained a hundred per cent in a single year....The evaporating of fruits and vegetables for the Alaska and Oriental trade has reached an advanced state of perfection. So successful have been the local packers of meats, lard and animal products, and so immense the volume of their business, as to attract the attention of those giants in that line, the Armours and the Swifts, who have recently purchased sites and are now erecting modern packing establishments, with a view of making Seattle their supply depot for their Pacific Coast and export trade....
Seattle was long ago made the headquarters and the trading center of the Alaska and British Columbia miners. Since gold began coming out of the Yukon in an ever-growing stream the banks of this city have left their business rapidly growing and the virgin gold constantly on the increase from various channels which eventually reached our U.S. Assay Office. This business is very profitable to the banks, but in a more direct way it benefits the merchants more than the banks....
1899 was a good year for Seattle and Seattle people....The Northern Pacific has invested more than half a million dollars in lands and water front for terminal purposes at this point....The Great Northern has finished its ocean wharves during the year. They are the largest, most capacious and enduring on the Pacific Coast. They are intended to accommodate the largest ships and the most enormous traffic....
There is hardly a question that Seattle will continue to be the shipbuilding center of Puget Sound, and further that it will be in due time one of the shipbuilding centers of the world....
The real estate business has been active....The expenditure of $125,000 per month in new houses, the crowding in of new people, with advance in rents, has had its effect on the land market....There have been no business failures....the moneys deposited in the ten banks [have gone] from $4,500,000 in 1897 and $7,000,000 in 1898, to $13,500,000 in 1899. More coal has been mined and shipped than in any previous year; more lumber and shingles cut and marketed, and more fish caught, packed and sold. The gold mining interests of the town have been greatly augmented, the virgin gold brought to Seattle averaging a million dollars a month for the whole year. The daily newspapers have been greater and more enterprising....This city is recognized as the news and literary center of the upper coast....New factories have been started, and the tin pail army has increased from a brigade to a corps in strength. The inhabitants gained 6,000 in number in 1897, 8,000 in 1898, and 10,000 in 1899....