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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1889 | 4 |
| 1891 | 3 |
| 1892 | 3 |
| 1893 | 3 |
| 1894 | 3 |
| 1895 | 17 |
33 stories matching payabl
- The Unpaid Laborers of Seattle
Eight Russian laborers track down their employer in Seattle to demand back wages after being forced to sleep outdoors at a remote work site.
- The State Tries to Soften the Panic for Delinquent Taxpayers
The Senate passes a bill remitting penalties and interest on delinquent 1893–94 taxes, citing “great financial stringency” and declaring an emergency.
- The First Veto: A Stand Against Seattle's Risky Debt
Mayor White halts an ordinance that would have saddled the city with private developers' debts under the guise of street improvement bonds.
- The $10 Letter That Wasn't Meant to Be Read
A Democratic congressional hopeful solicits a Republican postmaster for $10—using party paper, an insurance-company envelope, and a paper trail that ends up at the Post-Intelligencer.
- The Hop Growers' Scrip Solution
Local banks and merchants collaborate to issue IOUs as cash to help farmers survive the harvest season.
- Seattle's Cutoff Conundrum
Superintendent Wilson triggers a neighborhood uprising by shutting off water to hundreds of residents who missed payment deadlines.
- The Land Agent's Ledger: A Tacoma Suicide, $15,000 in Policies, and a Northern Pacific Audit
After Paul Schulze's death, New York Life agents move to pay his policies while railroad officials quietly examine the books of their late land agent.
- The City’s New Bonding Power
New legislation grants Seattle the authority to issue local improvement bonds, shifting the financial burden of street and sewer projects directly onto benefited property owners.
- The Walla Walla County Debt Trap
A railroad promoter’s aggressive scheme to offload personal financial liabilities onto the taxpayers of Walla Walla County.
- The Price of Municipal Ownership in Kent
Citizens of Kent are left with a mounting debt and a white elephant after a failed attempt to run their own utilities.
- The Money Lenders Take Another Spokane Block
A foreclosure suit on the Kaele block reveals a family that paid nearly $11,000 in interest — and still stands to lose the property to a Dutch mortgage bank.
- Legislature Offers Tax Relief to Struggling Property Owners
A new bill aims to waive penalties and interest for delinquent taxpayers, while proposing a shift to semi-annual payments to ease the burden on residents.
- Seattle Bets $7 Million on a Canal Through the Tide Flats
St. Louis capitalists will dredge a waterway from Lake Washington to the Sound and fill the flats with new ground — if the subsidies come through. The paper calls it the making of the city's commercial supremacy.
- A Rope of Rags, a Jar of Coal Oil, and a Tacoma Arson Plot
Fire Chief Bruemmer found a carefully laid fuse running through a mortgaged tenement—just before the owner left town for Neah Bay.
- The New Baptist University Opens Its Doors
After securing land and a $18,000 endowment, the newly constructed Seattle University prepares to receive its first students in the city's southern suburbs.
- The Shackles of King County
An editorial plea for a new courthouse and jail to address the 'barbarous' conditions for prisoners, the insane, and the public.
- A Failed Seattle Bank’s Frozen Fortune
Receiver C. M. Sheafe told the court that the Washington Savings Bank’s notes and bonds might eventually pay, but its real estate was unsellable in the hard times of 1894.
- A Forged Check Leads to a Hotel-Room Arrest
A bogus $7.50 check at a Columbia Street drugstore unravels into cocaine, morphine and a man who may have been the "Henry" on the signature.
- The Great Hose Heist: How a Seattle Fire Department Was Almost Scammed by a New York Manufacturer
A peculiar dispute over fire equipment reveals the cutthroat world of late-19th-century municipal procurement, where agents played cities against manufacturers and warrants were used as currency.
- The $40 Forgery That Fooled Seattle’s Hardware Elite
A dashing stranger with a dark mustache and bare chest walks into W.P. Boyd & Co., flashes a forged check from the Seattle Hardware Company, and vanishes with $40 in cash—leaving behind only a single typo that saves the victim from total ruin.
- Seattle's Schools Were Running on Borrowed Money—and the Bill Was Due
In 1895, the school board urged voters to ratify a stack of bonds and warrants incurred to build schools, warning that the alternative was a six-month school year—or repudiation.
- Henry Yesler's Secret Note Comes Due
A Seattle jury spends fifteen minutes awarding a pioneer's long-hidden IOU—about $125,000 with interest—after the Yesler estate offers no defense.
- A Bank President Accused of Looting His Own Vault
Deputy Internal Revenue Collector James P. Gleason says he bought $10,000 in Commercial National Bank stock on promises that turned out to be worthless—and that H. W. Wheeler used a mortgage company to hide the assets.
- The Canal That Would Invent South Seattle
At meetings in Georgetown and River Park, property owners pledged land, cash, and labor to a waterway scheme they promised would drain the Duwamish and turn tide flats into gold.
- A Tacoma Marriage Ends in Murder and Suicide
Isaac H. Bratton shot his wife and then himself after weeks of suspicion, religious friction, and threats—a domestic tragedy that consumed a Tacoma household.