The Steam Engine Scandal of 1878

Mr. John Burke, the agent from whom the City Council lately purchased a steam fire engine, writes us from Portland: 'In the Seattle Tribune of August 27, under the head of Old Seriah Brown, you are accused of allowing the city to be swindled out of $1,000, by not purchasing the fire engine directly from the factory. I sold you the engine at the factory price, and you would have had to pay the same price if you had bought it then. One of the councilmen in Olympia wrote to the factory last winter for the price of a third class engine, and the answer was $4,000; and you have purchased that engine on the best terms that any engine has been purchased in Oregon or Washington Territory. The statement that the city was swindled by the Mayor is purely a malicious fabrication.' We never saw the article referred to until after the receipt of this letter, so little interest do we take in that organ of private gossip and personal defamation. All the material facts were known to the Council before the contract was made; every means of information available was exhausted, and the only complaint of the transaction we have heard of from any source is in the lies of Tommy Prosch.