The Secret Plot to Block a City Appointment
When labor leaders discovered a politician was angling for a street commissioner post, they held a secret midnight meeting to kill his candidacy—but a reporter was listening through a hole in the roof.
The Western Central Labor Union held an executive session after regular business last night and passed a motion requesting W. G. Armstrong use his influence with the board of public works to prevent the appointment of Robert Bridges as street commissioner under the incoming administration. Bridges is one of the local leaders in the anti-Knox wing of the People's party that worked for the success of the Democratic ticket and is making a hunt for a job on the theory that 'to the victors belong the spoils.' But unfortunately he belongs to the Knights of Labor faction, with which the Western Central Labor Union and nearly all the trade unions in the city have been at loggerheads for a long time. The executive session was so profoundly secret that the record was ordered expunged from the minutes, and, but for the fact that a Post-Intelligencer reporter discovered a hole in the roof at an opportune stage in the debate, the object and result of the mysterious session would probably never have been made known.
“The executive session was so profoundly secret that the record of it was ordered expunged from the minutes.”
The fierce battle over who controls city appointments and the lingering suspicion of 'political machines' echoes the perennial tension in Seattle politics between grassroots organizing and institutional gatekeeping. Just as the labor unions in 1892 fought to keep their rivals from gaining local power, modern Seattle continues to grapple with the influence of concentrated political factions over city departments.
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