The Teamsters’ War Over Police Leadership

The teamsters and truckmen of the city, numbering nearly or quite a hundred of as intelligent and reputable citizens as can be produced in equal numbers by any other class in the community, took it upon themselves—as they had an unquestionable right to do—to organize for the purpose of electing one of their number as Chief of Police. Their reasons for this movement are not only apparent to themselves but to a large number of other citizens who are opposed to organized rings in the administration of the judicial department of the city government, and who have observed with suspicion the mysterious personal and business relations between the court, the police, and the criminal classes who ply criminal vocations in the midst of the population. The person named by the teamsters for Chief of Police presents in a preeminent degree the necessary qualifications for that office, both in ability and moral character, and in his entire freedom from disputable associations. This movement and its movers are assailed through the Chronicle in ribald wit, disgraceful to any decent journal, attempting by coarse innuendo to represent the teamsters of this city as an organization of lousy loafers. This comparison betrays the highland origin of the new editor, who will talk what runs in their head. There is no teamster in the city whose reputation for social decency would suffer by comparison with either of the proprietors of the Chronicle.