The President and the Timber Thieves
A political scandal erupted when President Grover Cleveland fired a federal prosecutor who had successfully taken on a powerful railroad monopoly for illegal logging.
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 circumstances surrounding the removal of Col. Patrick Henry Winston indicate the most flagrant subservience to corporation influence; and the facts warrant a belief that no less a personage than Grover Cleveland is manipulating the department of justice in the interest of a powerful corporation. Mr. Winston had received unsolicited assurance that he would remain in office until the expiration of his term. It was the President of the United States who removed Mr. Winston, and with his own hand sent a dispatch curtly advising him of his removal. Mr. Winston had convicted the Northern Pacific Railway Company before Judge Hanford for unlawfully cutting timber from the public domain. This was an unpleasant precedent for the corporation—a precedent that had only to be followed up to recover to the people the value of the immense quantities of timber taken from their domain. Mr. Winston was pursuing his victory when Grover Cleveland interfered with his summary removal.
“This was an unpleasant precedent for the corporation—a precedent that had only to be followed up to recover to the people the value of the immense quantities of timber taken from their domain.”
This 1893 conflict between federal oversight and railroad land-grab interests reflects the recurring tension in Washington state over the privatization of public timber and the influence of regional industrial giants on national politics. Much like today’s arguments over corporate capture of regulatory agencies, the controversy centered on whether the federal government prioritized public assets or the bottom lines of its most powerful rail barons.
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