Bags of Gold and a Streetcar Auction in Tacoma
A sheriff's auction outside the Pierce County courthouse transfers the Point Defiance end of the street railway to General Electric for $82,000—with $100,000 in gold sitting in a hack.
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.
Tacoma, Dec. 31.—Special.—Bags of gold knee deep in a hack, and guarded by half a dozen officers and private detectives, stood in front of the county courthouse today while the Point Defiance end of the Point Defiance Edison street railway was being bid in by the General Electric Company for $82,000.
If it had been known that there was over $100,000 in the hack there would have been a great crowd there to gloat over it. The few who did know of the great wealth held in the little canvas sacks looked wistfully at it, and Sergeant Tom Devereaux and Detective Sterling Le Roy, who sat in the hack with their legs crossed uncomfortably over the yellow metal. A clerk from the London San Francisco bank, from which institution the gold was secured, sat opposite the armed representatives of law and order and the city of Tacoma. Outside and about the hack there were other men, whom the wistful gazers took to be private detectives.
Deputy Sheriff Patterson acted as auctioneer for the sheriff and the first bid was for $1. Then Judge Frank Paxton, representing S. Z. Mitchell, of the General Electric Company, raised the $1 to $82,000, and the road, which Mr. Mitchell considered worth about $82,000 under the depreciated condition of the stock, was knocked to the company.
C. S. Fogg, who represented some of the mortgagees, thinks the road worth from $100,000 to $250,000. The mortgages and indebtedness on the road amount to about $180,000. Charles S. Hinchman, of Philadelphia, being the largest claimant, his claim will be paid first.
The south end of the road, from Ninth Street to Edison, is now owned by the Tacoma Traction Company, which is understood to have been incorporated for $500,000 for the purpose of buying that end of the property. When the bidding was over at the courthouse today the $100,000 in gold was taken back to the London San Francisco bank, and the receiver of the road will continue to operate it temporarily. The purchase money will be paid upon the order of the court.
“Bags of gold knee deep in a hack, and guarded by half a dozen officers and private detectives, stood in front of the county courthouse today.”
Tacoma's early streetcar wars were about who controlled the tracks and the fares—questions that still shape Puget Sound transit planning. The gold-in-a-hack auction is a reminder that public infrastructure has always been entangled with private capital.
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