The Political Price of Water
A South Tacoma pumping station breakdown exposes how patronage hiring led to an industrial disaster.
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.
Mayor Wright's city administration is conducted upon the principle of grabbing all the spoils in sight. Out at South Tacoma the spoils included three jobs in the city's new pumping station at the wells. Two carpenters recently needed places, also an engineer. They were assigned to the pumping station. The fact that there were plenty of competent Democrats who were engineers did not cut any ice; the politicians had friends to take care of. One of the carpenters, feeling he ought to do something to earn his salary, picked up the engineer's oil can. 'Those machines need oilin',' he soliloquized, then began pouring oil on the compressed rawhide pinions—parts made especially durable and noiseless as long as they were let alone. The oil sank into the pinions and they began to swell like sponges in the water. The machinery came to a stop last Sunday and the city's wells went out of business. The dirty Clover Creek water alone slushed down the city's pipes. The cost of the ruined pinions is $300. While waiting for new ones, makeshift bronze pinions were put in, but the incompetents broke something else, and the plant is not running today.
“The machinery came to a stop last Sunday and the city's wells went out of business. The dirty Clover creek water alone slushed down the city's pipes.”
This 1904 account of political patronage interfering with critical infrastructure resonates in today's debates over the management of public utilities and the professionalization of city services. It serves as a reminder that when government jobs are treated as political favors rather than technical requirements, the public pays the price—in this case, quite literally, with dirty water.
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