County Surveyor Pocketed $2 a Day From Subordinates
A Seattle newspaper exposes how the local county surveyor was illegally skimming off the wages of his subordinates for his own personal profit.
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.
Elsewhere in this issue will be found a statement of the manner in which County Surveyor F. F. Ames has been compelling his subordinates to share their wages with him. Collecting from the county $5 per day for each of his subordinates, he appropriates $2 of this to his own use, the subordinate actually receiving but $3 per day. In this manner a considerable amount of money has illegally found its way from the county treasury into Mr. Ames' pocket. The Post-Intelligencer is aware that there are those who justify this method of procedure by some code of morals which is adopted for the purpose, but no amount of sophistry or talk about professional usage can overcome the stubborn fact that Mr. Ames has taken money from the county treasury upon a false representation of the facts, and has by the same act deprived his subordinates of the pay which, on his own statement, is justly theirs. Mr. Ames' offense is such as to justify his immediate removal from office. This would be a most inadequate punishment, and, unless the law on this point is wretchedly defective, an effort should be made to inflict upon him a punishment more nearly commensurate with his guilt.
“no amount of sophistry or talk about professional usage can overcome the stubborn fact that Mr. Ames has taken money from the county treasury.”
Public corruption in King County government remains a recurring theme in local civic discourse. While the methods of graft have shifted from the crude wage-skimming of the 1890s to more complex procurement or ethics scandals, the underlying struggle for accountability in the courthouse continues to mirror the same tensions present in the Post-Intelligencer's 1894 editorial.
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