The Flight of a Crooked City Treasurer
When the city press exposed deep corruption in the treasurer’s office, Adolph Krug didn't wait for the trial—he fled.
In forcing the exposure of the idiotic dishonesty of Adolph Krug, Seattle’s city treasurer, the Seattle press did a most remarkable piece of newspaper work, which, for the good it accomplished, was not even outdone by the disclosures of the New York press which put an end to Tweedism. The mighty power of the press as an engine for the public good is typified by such work as that of the Post-Intelligencer in the instance quoted. It threw a bomb into the 'reform administration' camp of Seattle. It stood up for the people, and finding that City Treasurer Krug was tampering with the city’s funds, it issued a clean challenge of the truth of the treasurer’s fraudulent statement that a balance of over $300,000 was in Seattle’s banks subject to his order. Such a manly defy to the treasurer to prove it was something an honest man could not have dared to ignore. The same day this appeared, the treasurer pleaded guilty by fleeing the city, and a nasty mess of official rottenness is now likely to be uncovered.
“The mighty power of the press as an engine for the public good is typified by such work as that of the Post-Intelligencer.”
Public finance transparency remains a cornerstone of Seattle politics, echoing this 1893 scandal where a treasurer fled rather than face the scrutiny of an independent press. The 'Krug-gery' became shorthand for the exact kind of local graft that civic reformers fought against for decades.
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