Seattle: 1900-1920 -From Boomtown, Through Urban Turbulence ...

Fight for Control of the Waterfrontthe Willamette River. Holladay’s domination of both Oregon transportation and Oregonpolitics ended with the collapse of his financial empire in 1873, though the transportationnetwork that he established was extended later by others.That railroads became prime targets first of the Grangers, then the Populists,and finally the Progressives of the early twentieth century is not surprising. The railroadcompanies, allied with the business elite of whatever communities their lines passedthrough, stood in the way of substantially all political reform. Passage of the Hepburn Actin 1906 finally gave the Interstate Commerce Commission the regulatory authority overrailway practices that it had previously lacked.As to the GN and NP, together they purchased the Burlington Railroad system in1901 in order to secure a connection to the Chicago hub and to stabilize the transcontinentalrail business along the northern tier. Known as the Northern Securities Company, thismonopoly could charge whatever rates the traffic would bear; its stock was consideredby the U.S. Attorney General Philander Knox to be thirty percent water. This monopolywas but a climax to the railroad reorganizations that the J. P. Morgan interests, in alliancewith Hill, had been involved in since 1896, when the NP drifted into receivership. StuartDaggett, in his classic study on these reorganizations, notes that the NP was dominated bythe Morgan-Hill interests since that time.17Anders Wilse’s 1898 view of the tideflats may be compared to this 1914 record of the same neighborhood. Here,sixteen years later, both Fourth and Sixth Avenues cross the new industrial district, although temporarily ontrestles. The view from Beacon Hill looks due west to Robert Moran’s former shipyard. The long shed fromwhich the Nebraska was launched ten years earlier is profiled against Elliott Bay. Above it, the popular Luna Parksprawls above the tidelands off of Duwamish head. The Centennial Mill, one of the early opportunists on thetideflats, is included on the far left.