The Political Flip-Flop over the Lake Washington Canal
A scathing editorial exposes the hypocrisy of a Tacoma publisher using the canal project as a pawn in a larger Republican party feud.
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.
Mr. Nelson Bennett is now devoting a portion of the editorial space in his organ, the Tacoma Ledger, to efforts to explain how a member of the Republican national committee can support the Democratic state and congressional ticket. Mr. Bennett's so-called explanation takes the form of abuse of those in favor of the Lake Washington canal project, which he denounces as a bold attempt to loot the national treasury. The suspicion is growing that Mr. Bennett finds in the canal a pretext rather than a cause; he is determined to defeat the Republican party because it would not submit to his dictation. On August 2nd, just eight days before the Republican state convention, the Ledger claimed Pierce County had no objection to the canal if it stood on its own merits and did not diminish other appropriations. Ten days later, after the Republican convention endorsed the project, the Ledger declared the canal a 'job and a steal,' despite it being in the exact same legal position as before. Could the gauziness of Mr. Bennett's pretext be more plainly apparent?
“The suspicion is growing into a certainty that Mr. Bennett, in his opposition to the Republican ticket, finds in the canal a pretext rather than a cause.”
The rhetoric of 'looting the national treasury' and 'pretextual' political fighting over Seattle's infrastructure remains a staple of our local civic discourse. Just as the canal was a political football in 1892, modern regional infrastructure projects in Seattle often face similar bad-faith debates masking personal or party-line vendettas.
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