The Street Improvement Fiasco

The current state of the street improvements in Tacoma is nothing short of a mess. Work on improvements, begun this year, has stalled, as Mr. Caldwell, one of the contractors, is out of town and has been for some time. Following a settlement reached at the office of City Attorney Carroll, the purpose was to settle all accounts with the workmen. The amount was reported at the time to be around $3,000. However, the settling of the difficulty—said to have been caused by putting money in the Tacoma National Bank and the workmen's individual claims on personal time tickets while 'Cash' and 'Caldwell' balanced their own accounts—is a mystery. It is known that this satisfactory settlement was interrupted for some reason, and now the city withholds the money from them. Some three thousand dollars is still owed by the contractors to the laborers, and many of them are in great distress because of it. There were about fifty workmen, laborers, and teamsters with claims ranging from $10 to $100 each. They say that they were paid regularly every month during the continuance of the work until the last month. At the time of the settlement referred to, Mr. Caldwell was present, but shortly after, he went away. Many of the workmen, as stated, have been evicted because of not settling their board bills. At the close of the contract, a number were unable to get work elsewhere and wanted to leave the city and were compelled to sell their time slips at 50 per cent discount. They held meetings two or three times a week to consider what was best to do, and some very violent propositions were considered seriously. Even now, when or how the difficulty will be settled is still a puzzle.