The Aldermanic Walkout
A Seattle city board meeting collapses as council members stage a deliberate no-show to block a printing contract protest.
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.
There was no quorum present at the meeting of the board of aldermen which was to have been held last night to take action upon the matter of the city printing. Aldermen Miller, Carle, Sweeney and Daulton were in attendance, but Aldermen Jordan, Cram, Ingram and Stocks failed to make their appearance. The four aldermen last named are the members who voted at the previous meeting to award the contract for the city printing to the Telegraph in spite of the fact that it was neither the lowest nor the best bid. That the absence of these four aldermen was due to a prearranged plan few will doubt. It would seem, therefore, that the efforts to do violence to the city charter and to set at defiance the interests of the people have not been abandoned. Unfortunately for the ultimate success of such a scheme, however, the people of Seattle are living under a government of law and not under a government dominated absolutely by a partisan ring or a partisan newspaper.
“The people of this city can compel the board of aldermen to do what the charter of the city says that they shall do.”
Local political squabbles over municipal contracts and 'partisan rings' have been a fixture of Seattle governance since the 1890s. The tension between the city charter's mandates and the maneuvering of the Board of Aldermen prefigures the century-long civic battle over how Seattle balances political loyalty with public transparency.
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