A City Council, a Bank, and a $15,000 Blackmail Charge

Tacoma, March 25. — Special. — Tomorrow morning is the time set by the council for the management of the Ledger to appear before that body and prove the charges that have been made through the paper against the finance committee and members of the council. It is extremely unlikely that any attention will be paid to the council's mandate by the Ledger. Nelson Bennett, the owner, is now in San Francisco, and C. A. Snowden, the manager and managing editor, has been ill at home with the grip for over a week past.

This morning the Ledger said editorially: 'Messrs. Harris, Votaw, Lister, [illegible], Hartman, Nash and Watson, of the council, have expressed a desire to investigate themselves publicly, and have called upon the Ledger to prefer formal charges, as a basis for fair trial. When little and big offenders give proof that they can honestly try and punish themselves for their offenses; when insane persons form a habit of making faithful and logical inquiry into their own condition of mind, and of sending themselves to asylums; when incompetence becomes competent to deal with anything, it will be time enough for the Ledger to comply with this demand. Meantime, if these gentlemen insist upon investigating themselves in public, let them proceed upon charges already frequently made, repeated and insisted upon. The Ledger has frequently accused them of gross, continued and helpless incompetency. For specifications, reference is made to their management or mismanagement of the public funds; their absolute failure to provide a new source of supply for the water system or to protect the old one; their helpless toleration of the intolerable condition of Pacific avenue; their failure to collect delinquent street assessments, even from delinquents among their own number; their failure in the matter of proposed charter amendments, and their senseless, purposeless maunderings in regard to the water front. For proof to sustain these several specifications let them look to their own records. The series of resolutions in regard to the payment of outstanding warrants, passed, rescinded, revised and finally repealed at the meetings of the last two months, ought to be sufficient on which to base a finding. If that finding is of a character to give confidence in the integrity of the city's legislators, or if it is not, it will quite dispose of all need to prefer further charges.'

The News tonight contains several columns of matter in denial of the charge made by the Ledger that it had blackmailed one of the banks of the city out of $15,000. A statement is published, signed by officers of all the banks in the city containing city deposits, denying the charge that such a sum had been demanded or paid. The bank the Ledger referred to was the Tacoma National bank. W. H. Allen, president of that bank, affixes his name to the News' denial.