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

20 Part Oneprofitable as they were extended to serve the outlying communities being promoted bydevelopers. Seattle’s expansion outward was but a lesser version of the extreme real-estatepromotions in Southern California. Mergers of the weaker with the stronger street railwaysbecame common in Seattle and other cities.As elsewhere, when Seattle developers subdivided properties to sell lots they neededto guarantee access to downtown. Street railway companies had to be induced to build linesto the suburbs. When they did the ridership moreoften than not proved too little to pay expenses,and the firms passed into receivership. Morethan a dozen of these independent lines operatedunder city franchises in the 1890s. During theDepression most used capital that was supposedto be reserved for maintenance to operate. Thispractice led to the deterioration of what werealready poorly constructed trolley systems. Inthis setting the Stone and Webster ManagementCorporation of Boston had the banker JacobFurth apply in 1899 for a forty-year franchise toconsolidate four such streetcar lines. Stone andWebster was representing two eastern investmentfirms: Lee, Higginson and Company and Kidder,Peabody and Company. The firm also heldGeneral Electric securities issued earlier by thefour companies to pay for equipment they hadpurchased. On 12 May 1899 the companiessigned escrow deeds.On 9 March 1900, a blanket forty-yearfranchise was granted to Furth and his partner,J. D. Lowman. However, a citizens’ group, theCommittee of 100, led by James Allen Smith ofthe University of Washington, argued successfullyto shorten the life of the franchise to thirty-fiveyears, to make the new firm provide free transfersto riders, and to allow riders the option of buyingtickets in lots of one hundred or more at a twenty-Most of the community of squatters that held to the bluff andbeach below Denny Hill since the early 1890s were evicted forthe opening of the north portal to the railroad tunnel boredbeneath the central business district. The work began on AprilFools Day, 1903, when cannons shooting Cedar River waterfrom the municipal system first attacked the bank. The rocksthat could not be carried away on the flood were blasted. Anestimated 500 thousand cubic yards of dirt was removed fromthe tunnel by a crew that sometimes numbered 1,000, and muchof the dirt was used as fill along the waterfront, although thistime not for squatters.