Labor’s Young Socialist Hopeful for Everett Commissioner
As Everett transitions to a commission-style government, the labor movement taps 27-year-old R.J. Olinger, an electrical worker, to represent their platform in the upcoming municipal election.
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.
The voters of Everett have a right to know the qualifications of labor's candidate for commissioner of public safety, R. J. Olinger. From a personal friendship covering ten years, I can attest to his character. I first met Jay Olinger when he joined the electrical workers union as a charter member, and I remember him for his fearlessness in expressing his views. From 1901 to the present, I have found Jay standing solidly behind every movement for the benefit of those who toil. He was never a destructive type; a born leader, he presided over the Trades Council with an impartiality that won him respect. Olinger is twenty-seven years old—an age common for leaders in business circles on the western slope. Some critics call him a socialist, but the time when that word could be used as a 'bogey man' to scare children is past. He is not a man to be dictated to; he has declared that if he cannot run the department of public safety the way he thinks is right, he will step down. He has taken a flat-footed stand on liquor and the social evil, believing laws are made to be enforced, not sidestepped.
“The time when the word 'socialist' can be used as the old-time mother used the words 'bogey man' to scare the children, is past and gone.”
Everett’s 1912 shift to a commission form of government was a radical civic experiment aimed at curbing machine politics, much like today's debates over how to best structure local governance to ensure transparency. Olinger’s rise as a young, pro-labor socialist highlights the city's historical identity as a hotbed of radical organizing, a legacy that still shapes the North Sound political climate.
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