The Mayor's Private Foundry
Mayor and School Director Gilbert Hunt stands accused of using his public positions to funnel municipal and school district contracts directly into his own iron foundry.
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 and School Director Gilbert Hunt has not allowed the statutes prohibiting a municipal officer or a school officer from profiting by the sale of goods to the city or the school district—or from having any financial interest in any contract made with either—to worry him in the least. As mayor, he received nearly five hundred dollars for the iron bands used in the construction of Worley's flume on East Alder street and he furnished the connections that infringed upon the Allen patent to the extent of nearly $700 more. His foundry has done hundreds of dollars worth of repairs on the old rock crusher, which has been loaned out to private contractors, and much other repair work has been done for the city. As school director, he supplied nearly one-thousand dollars worth of iron rods and other material in repairing the Paine school, and his foundry is now making an elaborate cornice for the new high school building. While some justify this as supporting a home industry, it remains a clear violation of the laws Mr. Hunt took an oath to uphold.
“The tyranny of mere money in society, in politics, in business or in any of the manifold forms of human activity is the coarsest and most vulgar tyranny.”
Conflicts of interest and the 'home industry' defense for local graft remain a persistent tension in municipal governance. This 1903 critique of Mayor Hunt illustrates a historical struggle to decouple local business interests from the oversight of city and school budgets.
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