The Senatorial Candidate and the Canal
Ole Hanson brings his fiery brand of politics to the Kennewick Commercial Club, debating the Panama Canal's toll exemption.
The story, cleaned up
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Ole Hanson, progressive candidate for U. S. senator, and J. C. Herbsman, state committeeman, were guests at the weekly luncheon of the Commercial club Wednesday. Mr. Herbsman predicted that the Columbia valley must inevitably come into its own as one of the garden spots of the Northwest. Mr. Hanson spoke briefly upon the Panama canal toll controversy and recorded himself as strongly in favor of the exemption of American coastwise traffic. He insisted that the canal was an extension of the American coast line, built through American territory and by American money. 'I own a bus line over on the west side,' said Mr. Hanson, 'and up in our street cars we have posted the schedule of prices at which we agree to carry passengers. Has anybody the right to say to me that the conductor when he gets aboard the car shall pay the same fare as any other passenger? No! More has any foreign nation the right to say that one of our ships which does not leave our coast line shall not pass through our canal toll free?'
“No more has any foreign nation the right to say that one of our ships which does not leave our coast line and which does not come into competition with foreign owned ships, shall not pass through our canal toll free?”
Ole Hanson, who would later gain national notoriety as the 'fighting mayor' of Seattle during the 1919 General Strike, here demonstrates the early-20th-century obsession with Pacific Northwest infrastructure as an extension of American economic nationalism. His argument about 'managing our own affairs' echoes the long-standing tension between local boosters and federal oversight in Columbia River development.
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