The city is governed under a charter of 1896, with various amendments, one of which (1908) provides for initiative and referendum petitions. The mayor is elected every two years. The city council is composed of nine members, elected at large for a one-year or a two-year term. The city owns its street rail way, water-supply and hydro-electric generating and distributing systems. The water supply is obtained from the Cedar river, and is stored in reservoirs with a capacity of 300,000,00o gal., in the Cascade mountains, 26 m. S.E. In 1911 the city took its first step towards acquiring the street railways, and in 1936 it owned 231 m. of track and had concluded plans for more. The municipal light and power plant built up its patronage, against determined opposition from the private companies in the city, until by 1936 it threatened to replace private concerns entirely. A zoning ordi nance was adopted in 1923. The assessed valuation of property for 1936 was $242,328,977. Building permits for 18,978 buildings were issued in the years 1931 to 1935 representing a value of $23, 838,000. The percentage of home ownership is high. The public school system includes 73 grade and special schools and 9 high schools. Attendance in higher grades is large (18,099 in and the percentage of illiteracy (o.8) was among the lowest in the U.S. in 1930. The public library, with II stations, had a circula tion of 3,505,206 volumes in The city has a cosmopolitan press, including two Japanese dailies and a Swedish weekly.
Seattle is the leading commercial, industrial and financial centre of the Pacific North-west. Its geographical position (the nearest United States port to the Orient, and the nearest large city of the United States to Alaska) makes it a natural receiving and dis tributing point for trans-Pacific and Alaska traffic, and the Panama Canal gives easy access to Atlantic and Gulf markets; while the products of its tributary territory and its own manu factures supply staple articles for outgoing freight. A large part of the mail moving across the Pacific is handled in Seattle. The traffic of the port in 1935 amounted to 7,660,843 tons, valued at of which $36,939,204 represented imports from foreign countries; $26,312,086, exports; and $269,646,506, domes tic coastwise receipts and shipments. The Washington customs district, of which Seattle is headquarters, imported goods worth $33,777,000 and exported goods worth $49,539,000 in 1935. These figures marked a reversed trend, for imports had exceeded exports before 1930. Imports of consequence are coffee and tea, vegeta ble oils, porcelain, corn, bananas, sugar, burlap, lumber, paper, shingles, coal, coke, creosote, and toys. Exports consist largely of lumber products, canned salmon, flour, apples, pears, gaso lene, salt, scrap metal, copper, hardware, automobiles, and ma chinery. As principal landing port of the North Pacific fisheries Seattle received 23,943,6001b. of salmon and halibut in Every State in the Union and almost every Canadian province contributes to the foreign commerce of Seattle, but the great bulk of the exports come from the north-western States and the south-western cotton-producing States (Oklahoma, Texas, Ar kansas and Louisiana). Seattle is the principal outfitting point for
the whaling industry and the fisheries of the North Pacific, the principal trading centre for Alaska, and the principal supply point and wholesale market for the 300 logging camps of Washington and the agricultural North-west in general. Cheap electric power, combined with abundant raw materials of certain kinds and distance from the older industrial centres, has stimulated manu factures, and in 1933 the city had 783 plants, representing an in vestment of more than $40,000,000 and producing goods valued at $86,218,021. Seattle is the seat of a branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of the 12th district. Debits in the local banking institutions amounted in 1935 to $1,88o,000,000.
Seattle was founded in 1852 by 21 white settlers who had arrived at Alki Point the preceding year, and was named after a friendly Indian chief (d. 1866). In 1853 a town plat was filed, King county was created, and Seattle became the county seat.
By 1855 it had a population of 300. In Jan. 1856, it was at tacked by neighbouring Indians and successfully defended by the U.S. sloop-of-war "Decatur." Growth was slow at first. The city was incorporated in 1869, with an area of 10.86 sq. miles. In 1870 the population was 1,107, and in 1880 only 3,533. The first railroad (the Northern Pacific) reached the city in 1884, and by 1890 the population had increased to 42,837, though a destructive fire had in 1889 burned down most of the buildings. Seattle was still a little-known lumbering town when in 1897 the discovery of gold in Alaska and the Yukon Territory changed it almost overnight into an important commercial centre, the outfitting point for prospectors, and the port to which they shipped their gold; and by 1900 the population was 80,671. The arrival of the first steamer from the Orient in 1896, marked the beginning of considerable foreign trade, and in 1910 the Union Pacific and the Milwaukee railroads were connected with Seattle. In 1909-10 the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition was held, on grounds which are now part of the university campus. Between 1905 and the close of 1910 ten adjacent cities and towns were brought within the city limits, and in 1910 the population was 237,194. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914 gave a new stimulus to the city's commerce, and the years of the World War, when Seattle built more ships than any other port of the United States, were a period of rapid and hectic growth. The average number of wage-earners in the city's manufacturing establish ments rose in five years (1914 to 1919) from 11,523 to 40,843 the value of the output, from $64,475,000 to $274,431,000. Since the first incorporation of the city in 1869 successive annexations of territory have increased its area about sevenfold.