as a counterweight to powerful corporations, those very corporations have a strong interest in trying to dominate the Port and make it serve their ends. From the outset, the railroads, the city's two leading newspapers (The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer), and the city's Chamber of Commerce, urged that the Port use its powers of taxation, bonding, and condemnation in support of what would now be called public–private partnerships. The initial three-man Port Commission was a compromise team that ran as a slate: former State Lands Commissioner Robert Bridges, a strong Progressive; Charles Remsberg, a Republican banker; and recently retired Army Corps of Engineers brigadier general Hiram M. Chittenden, who was expected to hold down the center. In the event, Remsberg proved to be less of a friend to the monied interests than expected. While the Port's initial plans proposed a mix of straight-out public ownership of some facilities and a major facility on Harbor Island along the lines of New York City's Bush Terminal, the latter set a high bar for the Pacific Terminal Company to issue performance bonds. That organization never succeeded in raising the required US$310,000, and voters assented to a proposal that shifted the "Bush Terminal" money to publicly owned facilities on the mainland side of the East Waterway. Owning and operating facilities themselves allowed the Port to set rates so as to promote trade, rather than to maximize their own profits. It also let them set up a "closed shop": in this era, and as long as Robert Bridges remained on the commission, all Port facilities were unionized. Naturally, these policies did not sit well with the established interests. Still, the outbreak of World War I brought even more traffic to the Port than the expected opening of the Panama Canal, and the recent investments meant Seattle had the most modern port facilities on the U.S. West Coast, while providing the lowest port costs, which stilled criticism for the moment. In the second quarter of 1915, Seattle alone saw more foreign trade than the entire state of California; its 1918 tonnage set a high-water mark that would not be matched again until 1965. Shipbuilding boomed as well, notably the short-lived but dramatic success of Skinner & Eddy. Still, this was a period in which American politics were not moving in the direction of Progressivism. As president of the Port Commission once Chittenden stepped down