The Price of Freedom: A City Treasurer's Bond
While a train wreck delayed the arrival of accused city treasurer Adolph Krug, his friends and family scrambled through the midnight hours to meet a $64,000 bail requirement.
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.
Adolph Krug was expected in Seattle last night, but a freight train derailed in a slide twelve miles north of the city, halting his passenger train. Meanwhile, Krug's associates were working frantically to secure his release. Justice Caldwell set the total bond at $64,000, divided into five separate portions. At midnight, bondsmen gathered at the Justice's house at 703 Eighth Street to finalize the paperwork. Among the sureties were Andrew Hemrich, president of the Seattle Malt and Brewing Company, and various local citizens. By 2:00 a.m., it was confirmed that the slide would keep Krug from reaching Seattle until the following morning, and the bondsmen adjourned. Krug faces charges related to a $153,000 shortage in the city treasury.
“When the pen stopped scratching the following names with the sums opposite their names had been affixed and accepted by the justice.”
This 1893 financial scandal highlights the era's tight-knit, transactional civic power structure, where the city's elite—brewers and businessmen—rallied to bail out a public official. Today, bail reform remains a central point of contention in Seattle's justice system, though the 'who you know' nature of the 1893 bonding process has evolved into a more formalized but still debated cash-bail economy.
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