The Political Brawl Over the Seattle Canal
A Yakima newspaper accuses a 'Seattle ring' of bribery and electoral intimidation as local races heat up.
Van de Venter, of Kent, one of McGraw's tools, was in Yakima Friday making his boasts that he had $15,000 to bet that McGraw would be elected; that King county would give him 3,500 plurality, and that Pierce county would not give Mr. Snively 1,500 plurality. Twenty-five hundred dollars was raised among the democrats that evening to 'see' Mr. Van de Venter, but that worthy, when pinned down, refused to bet, and said 'a man has a right to change his mind, hasn't he?' A short time previous to this, Van de Venter was exhibiting his '$6,000' of certified checks, and boasting that he had come over for the purpose of capturing some Yakima money, but he was sent here to make a bluff for political effect, and nothing more. The Herald man got a look at the big boodle of certified checks, but a careful count only showed nine $100 checks on the Bank of Commerce of Seattle. The canal ring will have to do better than that if they expect to bluff out such men as John A. Stone and Sidney J. Lowe.
“A man has a right to change his mind, hasn't he?”
This 1892 report captures the intense regional friction between the nascent Yakima Valley and the power centers of Seattle and Tacoma. The 'Seattle canal' refers to early debates over the Lake Washington Ship Canal, a project that boosters promised would transform the region but which rural skeptics feared would only enrich urban elites.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.