The Mail Service Sabotage in Olympia
Local merchants and citizens are suffering as a political feud between the Postmaster and steamboat owners paralyzes commerce on the Sound.
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.
In our issue of September 7th, we intimated that the Postmaster at this place had not discharged his duty. The intervening fortnight shows that the Postmaster is either sadly incompetent or is influenced by those striving to derive benefit from the mail service. The law says that the mail service on the Sound shall be performed in steamships. Such service was available, but the Postmaster did not choose to accept it, although the interests of the whole Sound are depressed and business paralyzed for the want of regular steamboat intercourse. We have in our possession the voluminous correspondence between the steamboat owners and the Postmaster, yet we cannot find a single clause to base his unwarrantable action. He maintains he 'did not feel authorized to enter into any agreement which should preclude this office from entering into any arrangement that would insure to the people of the Sound semi-weekly mail.' We trust that the people will now perceive exactly where the blame lies for the present prostration of business upon the Sound. The fact that a notorious man by the name of Scranton, who has sat like a nightmare upon the commerce of the Sound for the past eight years, has much to say upon the subject, does not lighten the Postmaster's accountability. This man Scranton knew he had an inexperienced subject to deal with, and it is not surprising that our Postmaster should become a tool of the man who boasts of bribing members of Congress.
“The fact that a notorious man by the name of Scranton, who has sat like a nightmare upon the commerce of the Sound for the past eight years, has much to say upon the subject, does not lighten the Postmaster's accountability.”
Public infrastructure like mail and transit has always been a battleground for local economic interests in Olympia. The tension between the 'incompetent' bureaucrats and the private operators wanting to control the route mirrors the perennial debates over transit and shipping connectivity that still define the region's relationship to its waterfront.
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