The Chamber of Commerce That Committed Suicide
A political operative's attempt to sabotage Seattle’s growth leads to the total dissolution of the Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce.
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 Port Townsend Chamber of Commerce has been dissolved. About a score of resolute citizens and heavy taxpayers attended a meeting for the express purpose of dissolving that organization after a telegram was sent to the U.S. Senate protesting government appropriations for Puget Sound ship canals and coast defense vessels. It appears that a few weeks ago, William F. Rupert—formerly of the Tacoma Ledger—and Secretary John A. Plum manipulated a meeting of only nine people to force through a resolution against the Lake Washington canal. They argued the project was a scheme to boom Seattle and unfairly benefit that city. Indignant members, including the chamber president, noted that no expert testimony was ever presented to support these claims. The chamber’s dissolution was immediate, with members calling the move a partisan stunt that injured Port Townsend’s reputation.
“The chamber is thoroughly dead now, so it can’t do Port Townsend any further injury.”
Inter-city rivalry over infrastructure funding is a recurring theme in Washington’s history; here, the fear that Seattle would receive all the 'coastal defense' focus led a local chamber to implode. Today, regional competition has largely been replaced by broader efforts at regional planning, though the echoes of 'Seattle-versus-everywhere-else' remain in local political discourse.
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