The Town Council Invites the Cattle to Roam
In a baffling policy shift, the city abolishes the poundmaster, effectively turning the downtown streets and the courthouse lawn into free-range grazing land.
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 city council last night abolished the office of poundmaster, and now the festive cow and the unlicensed dog have the freedom of the town, just as in the good old days when Walla Walla was still regarded as a country village. An ordinance was introduced to create a mounted policeman with the duties of poundmaster, but it was laid on the shelf to await developments. For a long time, the poundmaster has been invested with the powers of a mounted policeman with authority to arrest persons as well as cows and dogs, and the new ordinance simply proposes to call this officer a mounted policeman instead of poundmaster. The abolishment of the office is a decided step backward, but it may induce many farmers from the vicinity of Waitsburg, Milton, Freewater, and other small towns to remove to Walla Walla, where they can start dairies and allow their cows to graze on the courthouse lawn and to roam the streets at will. In this way, the action of the council last night may add to the population of the town and perhaps increase the voting strength of the administration at the next city election.
“If the cows and curs of the city could only understand the boon conferred upon them by the city council last night... they would hold a rousing ratification meeting.”
While modern municipal codes are strictly enforced, this piece captures the tension between Walla Walla's rustic, agricultural roots and its aspirations toward becoming a sophisticated urban center. The critique of political 'machine' tactics to build population through loose regulation echoes modern debates about civic planning and zoning for growth.
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