The Streetcar Franchise Seattle Couldn't Enforce

YESLER AVENUE DOUBLE TRACK. Alderman Jordan Insists on Cable Company Fulfilling Its Contract.

Seattle, April —. To the Editor: As the representative alderman of the citizens of Seattle, I cannot supinely stand by while so great a wrong is perpetrated against the city as is contemplated and is now being attempted by the Yesler Avenue Cable Car Company and their attorneys and friends in the city council. Citizens are in this trying hour using every honorable endeavor to revive the business of Seattle and to afford aid and relief to our idle workers. If men are now urging their subscription in an effort to raise a subsidy for the ship canal, they think thus to relieve our working people and stimulate business. Appropriations are made by our city council to furnish soup houses for our distressed poor, and all are praying with fervor for such a change in the finances and business conditions that will reorganize our bucket brigade and revive our marts of trade. Suddenly there is a semblance of good fortune.

There now becomes due to our citizens a legal obligation from a party of Eastern alien millionaires, by which several hundred thousand dollars would at this time be distributed in payment for goods furnished and labor done. Here is offered an opportunity for our merchants and laborers to earn and not beg a livelihood, and it would seem that every dictate of self-interest, honor, public faith and justice makes clear our duty to demand, particularly at this time, the fulfilling of this obligation. It is known certainly that if these obligated Eastern millionaires do not feel justified in carrying out their contract, others stand ready to immediately expend $1,000,000 in the same enterprise for us.

Yet, under these circumstances, what is now endeavored? The most shameless abuse of delegated power and the most outrageous sacrifice of the people's interests! In times of ordinary prosperity and in the general scramble for riches, such excessive conduct might be looked upon as a dereliction of duty; but under the present circumstances, where our mercantile and labor elements are standing idle and awaiting the opportunity to earn their wages and profit, such conduct is simply infamous on the part of the people's agents! Do councilmen forget who pay them and whose interests alone they are chosen to defend and advance? I am for the protection of the rights of the citizens who elected us against the impudent demands of these foreign beneficiaries of our franchises.

The facts are simply these: The city granted a charter to the Yesler Avenue Cable Car Company under certain specific conditions, one of which is that five years after such grant, which is now, this company is to complete its road by making it double track. Under their grant or contract with the city, if they do not immediately build that other track they will forfeit their charter. To fulfill their contract and build this track will necessitate the immediate expenditure in labor and merchandise of $500,000 among our merchants and those most worthy and distressed citizens—the working men. The people who are under obligations to expend this money are alien millionaires. I state that they are all aliens, residing in New York and other Eastern cities, to show that the council's duty is not to them but to the citizen first.

The most astounding fact in connection with this matter is that the citizens move like dumb cattle driven to the shambles and make no protest. Another wondrous condition is that I find myself almost alone in our city council denouncing the brazen impertinence of this cable car company! This is more remarkable because a petition signed by every resident along the line of the Yesler avenue railway has been presented to the city council demanding that the terms of the grant or franchise be fulfilled! These residents bought their homes on the line of that street railway with the assurance that their track would be doubled by 1895, and if there is any force in the legal principle of 'vested rights,' and the 'inviolability of contracts' except where invoked for the benefit of corporations, let it now be demonstrated!

I ask the people of the city of Seattle: What are you going to do about it? For myself, while I am not hostile to the rights of corporations, believing that such should be still, I shall battle insistently while councilman, as the servant of the people, for my clients' rights against all such preposterous, impudent, unjust and ungrateful claims as are now advanced by the Yesler Avenue Cable Car Company. J. EUGENE JORDAN.