The Secret Game Under the Sidewalk
A reporter uncovers a network of hidden gambling dens and 'wire-puller' locks operating with total impunity under the city's reform administration.
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.
It seems that Alderman Sweeney was right when he said he was deposed from the office of acting mayor so that the gambling element might have its swing. The acting mayor could not be more ignorant of the open violation of the reform administration's pledges if he were at the World's Fair. Until John W. Considine moved his headquarters, a 'crap' game was run without the slightest attempt at concealment in a small room under the sidewalk, accessible from the Standard theater. For months, a 'black jack' game has been run in the rear of Bunker & Shaw's billiard hall in the Clancy block on South Third and Washington streets. It is as much a banking game as faro. When a reporter visited, an attempt was made to give it an appearance of privacy by keeping the door locked, but if one desired to enter, no credentials were required; the applicant had but to run his finger through a hole in a flimsy wooden door, touch a catch, and the door flew open. Inside were twenty or thirty men and boys, mostly the latter, playing at a table. This is not the only club room in the city. If Chief of Police Jackson happens to walk past the Delcho saloon on Yesler Avenue near South Second Street and sees a man wearing good clothes making curious contortions in a little corner in front of the bar, he must not conclude the man is insane. There is a wire running from the bolt of the 'Delcho Club Room' upstairs through the wall into the hands of the well-dressed man in the corner. This explains his actions; he is only a reform administration 'wire-puller.'
“If the chief steps through this door into a stairway leading to the rooms upstairs and looks at the lock, he will see a wire running from the bolt which fastens it through the wall into the hands of the well-dressed man in the corner.”
This 1893 report reveals how Seattle’s 'reform' administrations often relied on performative governance while entrenched vice networks continued to operate behind secret doors. The 'wire-puller' in the saloon and the gambling room beneath the sidewalk illustrate the era's civic hypocrisy, a persistent theme in Seattle's long history of balancing political optics with the realities of the underworld.
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