The Cold Truth at City Hall
A winter coal shortage brings a parade of desperate applicants to a city official who doles out fuel with a mix of bureaucratic cruelty and casual dismissals.
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.
Yes, we are supplying coal to the poor in half tons now, Superintendent Blake said. There is a long row of applicants. Here is a package of applications from outside. A dozen carts are kept going as hard as the drivers can urge them from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Yet I fear we'll have to put on a few more carts. The holiday season crowds us pretty hard. Last year we had to buy an extra 250 tons, all on account of the late spring. In order to keep the applicants for coal in some sort of order and not retard Mr. Blake's other business, the Board of Police has assigned the Charities Department another policeman. John Woods was yesterday in charge. 'Teach your husband to drink less rum,' said Mr. Blake to a little woman with a red face; 'then you can buy your own coal. You might drink less yourself. Next.' This is my savage day, Mrs. Colston, rattled out Mr. Blake, as a seemingly heartbroken woman passed in an application. 'Come around some other day. You can afford to wait. If you can't, why your son, the minister, will send you around a ton.' 'I'm really sorry for you,' he said to the next applicant, who was a colored man, 'but if I was to misappropriate a ton of coal my bosses would jump me quicker'n lightning. You don't want me to lose such a nice, easy job, do you? Why don't you work, Titymus?' The colored man replied that he had been laid up with rheumatism, that his wife had the scarlet fever, and that the child was down with the measles. 'Fore God, Mr. Blake,' he added, 'I want this coal awful bad. I struck the preacher last Sunday night for a dollar. My friends are all as poor as myself. I won't be able to work for a couple of weeks more. The coal bin is low, and the days are gettin' very cold. You'd better let me have half a ton.' 'Well, we'll see, Titymus,' replied the Superintendent. 'Something's got to be done, sure; but, then, you are such a joker.'
“Teach your husband to drink less rum, said Mr. Blake to a little woman with a red face; then you can buy your own coal.”
The interaction at the coal office highlights a persistent tension in Seattle history: the struggle to balance necessary public charity with a bureaucratic culture of suspicion and 'worthiness' policing. Even today, the debate over who deserves public assistance and how to verify their 'need' echoes the cold, judgmental tone of the 1883 relief office.
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