The Young Hustlers of Wenatchee
A local merchant discovers that childhood ambition in the apple capital is already starting to look a lot like big-city corruption.
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.
They raise big red apples down around Wenatchee, about which Brother Fowler never tires of telling. The last number of the Republic might very appropriately have been called a story number as distinguished from a red apple number. The following is too good to be lost sight of: A business man of Wenatchee asked two boys who were hanging around his store if they were going to the show. 'I am,' replied the twentieth-century genius, 'but he ain't,' with a contemptuous wave of his hand in the direction of his running mate. 'And why ain't he going?' asked the merchant. 'Cause he ain't got any money, but I have.' 'Yes,' remarked the other, who is a Sunday school boy, 'you stole sacks from Conrad Rose and sold them back to him again. That's the way you got your money.' 'Humph,' retorted the genius with charming candor, 'and so did you steal sacks, only you did not steal enough.' That Wenatchee boy will be president of the 'Steal Trust' some day.
“Humph, retorted the genius with charming candor, 'and so did you steal sacks, only you did not steal enough.'”
This 1904 anecdote captures the early 'booster' culture of the Wenatchee Valley, where the pressure to succeed was becoming a civic obsession. Today, that same drive for economic growth continues to define the region, though the 'steal trust' of childhood pranks has evolved into the complex corporate land and water management issues that define the modern Wenatchee and Leavenworth corridor.
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