A City Fed Up: Seattle Demands an End to the Fire Department Follies

The people of Seattle have about come to the conclusion that there should be an end to the tomfoolery in the administration of the affairs of the fire department. A controversy which at one time was regarded with some interest has now become irksome, and there is a widespread demand that a trouble which has gradually assumed the characteristics of a farce should be immediately settled without any more nonsense.

The people of this city naturally take an interest in our fire department. Many of our prominent citizens were, only a few years ago, active members of the volunteer organization. The lessons of the great conflagration of 1889 are yet fresh in mind, and whatever is done toward providing adequate protection against fire or maintaining an efficient department will always receive the cordial approval of every good citizen.

The people have always been willing, and always will be willing, to appropriate enough money to provide a splendidly equipped and thoroughly organized service. They insist that we have only the best apparatus, demand that competent men be employed, and want the affairs of the department to be conducted in a plain, common sense, businesslike fashion.

The wranglings of the last year or two have become tiresome. The only interest the general public now takes in them grows out of a belief that they are unnecessary, ill-advised, unprofitable and demoralizing. No doubt there are merits on both sides of the question, but the people have long since wearied of listening to the merits of the case. What they want is a strong, capable, efficient and well-organized fire department, and if the mayor, council and commission cannot agree to provide the city with such, then let them give way to others who can and will.

Obstinacy, friendship, personal grudges and numerous other forces and motives have kept this fire department broil so long before the public that a relief from it would be received with profound gratitude and thanksgiving. If controversial differences similar to those so much talked of existed between private citizens, as such, there would be little solicitude and no debate expressed for a settlement; but when they prevail in an important department of our city government and have reached the petty, personal and poppycock stage, to the manifest detriment of the service in that department, it is about time that the leading actors realize that they are unfaithful to their trusts in not doing that for which they were elected.

The people are not so overwhelmingly in favor of any one man for chief, notwithstanding the fact that some may be deluded with that idea. The universal desire is that an honest and capable officer be selected for that position. If any one believes that the whole city is so profoundly interested in the candidacy of any particular individual as to allow of this idiotic bickering to continue indefinitely, he is seriously mistaken. There is too much at stake to permit of the controversy being drawn out much longer, and the sooner the cliques identified with it on both sides realize this the better it will be for the fire department and the more gratifying to the community at large.