The Mobbing of the Moralizers
When four prominent temperance leaders and a local businessman tried to close down a suspected illegal saloon, they were met on the street and pelted with rotten eggs.
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.
Tacoma, July 29.—As a result of the fight which the temperance leagues have been making on the club rooms and drug stores of Puyallup, four men were covered last night with bad eggs while on their way home from a temperance meeting. The Rev. A. A. Thomas, Methodist; Rev. George H. Trout, Presbyterian; Mr. Heath, a local deacon; and Mr. Hill, a prominent business man, were nearly all entirely covered with bad eggs which they had received from some unknown source. These men have been active in fighting the saloons and are engaged in the crusade for the arrest of a party who is charged with running a club house toward the east end of town, which has been under suspicion for some time.
“These men have been active in fighting the saloons and are engaged in the crusade for the arrest of a party who is charged with running a club house.”
This incident echoes the long history of Seattle and Tacoma’s neighborhood-level 'vice wars.' Just as 1899 residents clashed over the regulation of private clubs and alcohol, modern-day Seattle continues to grapple with tensions between community moral-policing and the existence of 'underground' social spaces.
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