The Bank and the High School Tax Feud
A local bank refuses to pay school taxes, sparking a fierce debate over civic duty and the funding of Walla Walla’s newest school.
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 First National Bank organ says 'That high school is being built anyhow, whether the knockers against Walla Walla's best interests want it or not.' Now who are the knockers? One of the worst knocks the high school proposition has suffered was the allegation of the Ankeny bank in its suit brought in Judge Hanford's court to enjoin the county treasurer from collecting the taxes assessed against its stock, that the five-mill school tax is null and void because the school directors failed to go before the county commissioners and make the estimates required by law. For that reason, the Ankeny bank refuses to pay its school tax, and yet the Ankeny organ has the gall to talk about knockers against the high school. Of course, the bank is perfectly willing that taxpayers in general shall pay the cost of the high school building as long as it can escape paying its just share of the taxes. It is as patriotic as Artemus Ward, who was ready to sacrifice all his wife's relations on the altar of his country if he could only keep from being drafted into the army himself. The First National Bank is willing to draw interest on the warrants to be issued in payment for the construction of the high school building if others will agree to pay the taxes and guarantee that the warrants will be redeemed. The bank is simply using its patrons and taxpayers in general to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.
“The bank is simply using its patrons and taxpayers in general to pull its chestnuts out of the fire.”
Conflicts over who pays for public infrastructure—and the tension between corporate tax avoidance and the civic common good—remain a central friction point in Walla Walla and beyond. This 1903 dispute highlights how early 20th-century rhetoric regarding 'patriotism' and 'responsibility' was weaponized by powerful institutions to shift the tax burden onto private residents.
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