The Treasury Betrayal
An editorial indictment of the city treasurer’s flight and the prosecutor’s leniency toward civic corruption.
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.
Treasurer Krug was no dupe. Public officials who think they have both a moral and a legal defense for their acts do not run away and return only under arrest. It is an insult to the intelligence of this community for the prosecuting attorney to say that the legal acquittal of Krug and his fellow conspirators will 'absolutely exonerate them from any criminal intent.' The robbery of the city treasury implies a breach of trust, and yet our prosecutor is content to describe it as an 'unfortunate affair.' Krug confessed his own sense of guilt by becoming a fugitive from justice, and whether the law is able to hold him to punishment or not, he ought not to escape the public reprobation which falls justly upon those who are lucky enough to escape through the looseness of the law.
“It is that and a great deal more; it is in moral equity at least a great crime, and Krug confessed that he thought so when he took to flight.”
This 1894 editorial captures a timeless Seattle frustration: the struggle to hold public officials accountable when money vanishes from the public coffers. The paper’s demand that a 'legal acquittal' does not equal 'moral exoneration' echoes modern debates about the gap between technical legality and civic responsibility in local government.
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