Seattle’s Canal Demand Became a Political Trap

OLYMPIA, Aug. 24.—[Special.]—At 1:30 this morning it is announced that a combination has been formed to carry through the anti-canal resolution and beat Lewis. Pierce County has joined hands with the forces of Shaw and Blalock in Southwestern and Southeastern Washington to put this plank into the platform:

“We heartily condemn the course of Senators Allen and Squire and of Representative Wilson in advocating the Lake Washington ship canal to the exclusion of the many necessary improvements of rivers and harbors in this state.”

A caucus of these three forces will be held in the morning to determine the candidate for governor. Blalock will probably be the man to receive the undivided support of the combination. The counties claimed for the deal are Adams, Asotin, Chehalis, Clarke, Cowlitz, Franklin, Garfield, Klickitat, Lewis, Mason, Okanogan, Pacific, Pierce, Skamania, Walla Walla, Wahkiakum and Whitman. Blalock contributed 100 votes, Shaw 76, Pierce County 31, and about 30 scattering are also claimed. Godman, of Dayton, is in the deal for congressman, and Warner, of Whitman, is left wholly in the cold.

Though James Hamilton Lewis still declares that his support is firm, and that he can hold the convention by a narrow majority, he is evidently keenly disappointed at the formidable consolidation of opposition to him and the probability of its victory. Said he: “Pierce offered me her support and the nomination were I willing to compromise on the canal, but my answer was that I owed every political honor I had received to King and I could not desert my people now.”

The perfection of this triple alliance is regarded as the great political stroke of the convention. Curiously enough L. D. Ross and the others who have been declaring that the canal was their dearest hope, and that they wanted to beat Lewis for governor in order to secure the great prize, are rejoicing in the movement which is not only to defeat Lewis but to denounce in bitter terms a public improvement demanded by Seattle citizens regardless of politics.

Earlier in the evening, the arrival of Lewis at 6:15 roused much enthusiasm among his supporters. The Spokane delegation and one or two others went with King to meet him at the wharf, and when he came to the headquarters at the Olympia Hotel he was heartily cheered. Later in the evening some Thurston County Democrats came with a band to serenade him, and he made a brief speech of thanks and acknowledgment.

King County went into caucus and was overwhelmingly for fighting to the bitter end for the canal. The delegation will try for a plank approving efforts to secure federal appropriations for the improvement of the Columbia River and its tributaries, of the Cowlitz, Puyallup, Snohomish, Skagit and Nooksack rivers, Gray’s Harbor and the Pacific Ocean harbors, for building the Lake Washington canal and for the construction of coast defenses. If the convention will not accept such a plank, King will ask the weak substitute of a general approval of federal appropriations for internal improvements. Should even this request be refused, King will stand in the last ditch and endeavor to tone down the resolutions undermining the canal.