The Price of Patronage: Political Graft in Washington Territory
A scathing editorial exposes how federal appointments in the Washington Territory were treated as commodities, with government officials accused of padding their estates through systemic corruption.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The Olympia Tribune, the only newspaper organ of the Republican party now published on Puget Sound—the Courier being only the personal organ of the office-holders—on the authority of a private letter from Washington, says the Gubernatorial office cost the present incumbent $2,500; the Indian Superintendency cost $4,000; and the Surveyor Generalship cost $2,000. These are the sums that Garfielde charges for the positions named. The prices are high, but the stealings are large, except in the case of the office first named. Garfielde thinks there is no merit in bestowing office without a valuable consideration. Those several amounts may possibly be not correctly stated, but that the Federal offices in this Territory under the control of the Delegate are matters of bargain and sale, there can be no reasonable doubt. Mr. Garfielde, at the time of his first election, it is generally known, was in impecunious circumstances; his habits of life are anything but economical, and yet he has managed to accumulate a fine residence in Washington and add considerably to his estates in this Territory. Is there a man in Washington Territory knowing anything of the character of Beach, who believes that Garfielde recommended and procured the appointment of that man to the responsible position of Surveyor General from any honest motive? Beach has the disbursement of $70,000 voted by Congress for surveying the public lands. Beach has the responsibility of publishing a newspaper in the interests of the official ring, at a cost of not less than a thousand dollars a month. And Beach understands as well as any other the principles of 'substraction, division, and silence,' as practiced by the official sharps.
“Garfielde thinks there is no merit in bestowing office without a valuable consideration.”
While the 1872 landscape of 'official rings' and federal patronage seems distant, the core issue of concentrated power and the use of public resources for private gain remains a central friction in Pacific Northwest politics today. The newspaper's investigation into the 'official ring' mirrors the ongoing tension between civic accountability and the influence of well-connected political figures in the region.
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