Eugene Semple papers, 1858-1908

Eugene Semple came West seeking his fortune in 1863. Semple worked as a lawyer, newspaper editor, amateur engineer and inventor, farmer, and lumberman. Semple also earned appointments to several prominent political offices--Washington Territorial Governor, Washington State Harbor Commissioner and Oregon State Printer. He was also an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Washington State.

Eugene Semple, the son of a United States Senator from Illinois, was born in 1840. He left Chicago and moved to Portland in 1863, ostensibly to practice law. By temperament, however, he was suited for other things. Semple quickly abandoned law and got involved in Democratic Party politics and journalism. Eventually, with considerable difficulty, he and a local newspaperman, Thomas Patterson, purchased the floundering Portland Daily Herald in 1869. Semple became its editor and soon began to wage a spirited editorial campaign that helped return the Democrats to control of the state government in 1870. Following the typical “spoils” policy, Governor Lafayette Grover rewarded the Herald with lucrative state printing contracts and appointed Semple State Printer, considering him “the best editor we’ve got.” In 1870, the same year he became State Printer, Semple married Ruth Lownsdale, the daughter of an early Portland settler.

Using profits from the printing contracts and from sales of his wife’s real estate, Semple plunged into a variety of land and building speculations in Portland. The Panic of 1873 wiped out these speculative investments. The years ahead were the nadir of Semple’s career. Bankrupt, he left Portland with his growing family in 1875. The Semples homesteaded in eastern Oregon until Ruth divorced Eugene in 1883 and married another man, leaving Eugene with custody of their four children.

Semple quickly rebounded from the divorce and decided to re-enter politics. Seeking President Grover Cleveland’s nomination as Washington Territorial Governor in 1885, Semple mobilized the help of his influential family in the East and his own political connections in the West. The contest for the appointment consumed more than two years, as various political factions deluged Cleveland with petitions supporting Semple or his rivals. The President eventually chose Semple in 1887 to replace Republican Governor Watson Squire.

Semple’s two-year term as governor coincided with a period of turbulence and expansive growth in the territory. The population of Washington almost doubled during these two years, reaching more than 250,000 people. Many of the immigrants were miners whose demands for better working conditions and union recognition led to violence in the coal mines of the Cascades. Semple deplored the use of company strikebreakers, but refused to intervene forcefully on the workers’ behalf when called upon. He made a sharp distinction, however, between the interests of white workingmen and those of Chinese laborers. Semple thought of the Chinese as members of “a non-assimilating race.” During his gubernatorial campaign and his administration, he refused to condemn anti-Chinese rioters in Tacoma and Seattle even though he asserted that the Chinese had a right to remain in Washington if they so desired.

In addition to labor unrest, Governor Semple had to deal with a host of other problems caused by Washington’s exploding population. He convinced the United States Congress and Interior Department to fund an expansion of the territory’s elementary school system, as well as the construction of a new penitentiary, insane asylum, and school for delinquent youth. Semple also pressed Congress and the territorial legislature to pass laws regulating Washington’s overfished waters, but to no avail.

Women’s enfranchisement was another major issue during Semple’s administration. In 1887, to the chagrin of conservatives, Semple signed a women’s suffrage bill passed by the territorial legislature. The Washington Supreme Court, however, declared the law unconstitutional. Washington women did not earn the ballot again until 1909.

Republican victories in the national election of 1888 brought an end to most Democratic appointments in the territories. In April 1889, Semple was replaced by Miles Moore, a Walla Walla banker. But Semple was not yet off the political stage. Enabling legislation had been passed by Congress before Semple left office authorizing the admission of Washington to statehood. In September 1889, Semple was chosen as his party’s candidate for governor in the first state election. He lost to Elisha Ferry, another former governor of the territory. This was Semple’s last serious projection into politics. Indeed, his two-year stint as governor was really just an interlude in his larger career as a speculator and promoter.

After leaving the governorship, Semple spent his time managing a company he had bought while in office, the Lucia Mill Company in Vancouver, Washington. Unfortunately, the company’s profits were consumed in Semple’s unsuccessful efforts to interest Eastern investors in buying land in the Skagit Valley in the early 1890s. It was, however, in the economically-depressed Seattle of the mid-1890s that Semple undertook the most ambitious project of his business career--the south Seattle ship canal and harbor improvement scheme. Semple’s project was intended to supercede the uncompleted ship canal from Shilshole Bay into Lake Washington with a shorter, more daring route through the tidelands and hills of south Seattle, linking Seattle’s harbor directly with Lake Washington. Semple established the Seattle & Lake Washington Waterway Company and persuaded hundreds of Seattle residents to underwrite the south canal enterprise with a $500,000 subsidy pledge. Work on the south canal began in July 1895.

Semple knew that his project required a more secure form of financing than citizens’ donations. He proposed that the state allow companies to sell liens on tidelands that the companies would later reclaim. Semple planned to use the earth removed from the canal route to fill the tidelands. The legislature approved Semple’s scheme in 1893, but it did not go into effect until the Washington Supreme Court declared the law constitutional in 1898.. Many companies then entered the tideland business, filling Seattle’s tidelands and selling them as sites for waterfront industry and commerce.

The sale of tidelands did not generate enough revenue to allow Semple’s company to complete the difficult and expensive work of building the south Seattle ship canal. In addition, the wealthier and more influential backers of the northern ship canal route undermined Semple’s efforts to obtain financial backing from the local, state, or federal governments. Semple came to regard his opposition--which was pushing the north canal to completion while financial and legal problems continued to beset the south canal--as a conspiracy of “money kings.” Deeply frustrated and nearly bankrupt, Semple resigned as president of the Seattle & Lake Washington Waterway Company in 1903.

During the remainder of his life, Semple attempted to apply his ideas to similar promotions, convinced that he could still become a rich man. The most notable of these later schemes was a plan for bypassing the treacherous bar at the mouth of the Columbia River by digging a large ship canal from Astoria to Seaside, Oregon. Here too he failed, though not for a lack of vivid imagination. Semple lived out his last years on money borrowed from relatives. He died on August 28, 1908.