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

City Politics, 1904-1912: Progressivism Emergesobjections. However, because of this kind of obstructionism, the railroad companiesalienated their traditional conservative supporters, including the newspapers. Despite itsideological opposition to municipal ownership, the chamber of commerce joined TheSeattle Commercial Club in recommending that alternative in late 1910.Responding to this regrouping of interests, Cotterill, Thomson, and the corporationcounsel together framed a bill for the 1911 legislature to allow counties to establishport districts that would be under the direction of municipal corporations with broadgovernmental powers. The bill passed overwhelmingly in the state house and narrowly inthe state senate and was signed into law on 8 June 1911. Seattle voters established the Portof Seattle and elected three commissioners in September 1911.Part of the Bogue Plan would create a central harbor facility and convert LakeUnion into an industrial lake. The chamber of commerce saw in the Harbor Island terminals“promise [of] an early impetus to the commercial and industrial growth of the port.” Thechamber prophesied that the city could gain coastal supremacy by developing a harbor facility“along the lines of [New York’s] Bush terminals” and by entering “into a lease with someresponsible and competent party to build and operate theentire plant.” Miller Freeman had announced earlier, inthe first issue of his Town Crier, on 3 September 1910:“Cheap industrial acreage is necessary to give stabilityeven to the value of our present tidelands and primarywaterfront property [along with] provision of auxiliarydockage.” In a December 1910 Town Crier article titled“The Bush Terminals—A Lesson for Seattle,” C. C.Closson claimed that New York’s shipping supremacywas due to private development of its waterfront, whichgave it a “public character.” In Seattle many differentbusiness lines were reaching a consensus on how todevelop the harbor.Independently of the advocates for the Bushterminals, the port commissioners in September 1911began preparing a bond issue. If approved, $600,000would go to straightening the Duwamish and $750,000to constructing the canal, and $50,000 would pay forthe Cedar River project and $25,000 for a city dock.With R. H. Thomson now acting as port engineer, thecommissioners planned a $3 million facility, but insteadof submitting the whole package to the voters they limitedtheir first request to $500,000 for one pier only. If theywere successful in this first endeavor, they planned tosubmit the rest of the package in due time. Chittenden,moving systematically and conservatively, wrote tothe Bush Terminal Company and other port operatorsfor information. The Bush Terminal Company’s vicepresident of advertising, R. F. Ayers, replied to Chittenden85As depicted in Cartoons andCaricatures, a 1906 collection ofpolitical sketches by Seattle artists,Scott Calhoun, the city’s new corporatecounsel, tests the relative gravity ofcorporate and municipal law. In MenBehind the Seattle Spirit, a competingbook of political cartoons publishedby Harry Chadwick of the Argus alsoin 1906, Calhoun is described duringhis honeymoon as the city’s attorney.“He is an able lawyer, possesses aneven temperament, and such a genialdisposition that he can beat a man ina lawsuit, and make him like it.”