The Railroad Men Had the Proxies. The Chamber’s Businessmen Had Had Enough.
A fight over a Chamber of Commerce nominating committee exposed how thoroughly Northern Pacific and T.R.P. men had captured Tacoma’s civic boosters—and how a reform faction decided to run its own ticket.
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 Ledger today editorially deplores the nomination of an independent ticket by members of the Chamber of Commerce, saying:
“Under the rules of the Chamber, the committee to nominate officials is elected by ballot. There was a large attendance at the meeting on August 1, when the regular nominating committee was selected. It is a bad precedent in the Chamber that an opposition ticket should be placed in the field. Heretofore the selection of the nominating committee has been ratified as a matter of course.”
The Ledger evidently fails to understand the fact that there is a growing sentiment among the business men of Tacoma that the dominating influences of the T. R. P. and the Northern Pacific railway in the Chamber should be tempered by equal factors of strength representing outside interests.
There was a fair attendance at the meeting when the nominating committee was selected, but the selection was made by the railroad people, who had quietly secured a large number of proxies and brought them in unexpectedly.
Had the nominating committee been chosen by the majority of the members present at the meeting, the chances are that it would have had a somewhat different aspect.
The idea that the Chamber must ratify any ticket that the regular nominating committee chooses to put up is not based upon good sense. Why have an election at all, if nominations are always to be “ratified”? It would be simpler to allow the nominating committee to elect without further red tape.
The truth of the matter is that a large and vigorous element in the Chamber has become dissatisfied with the continued supremacy of the railroad interests in the organization. The fact is pointed out that this dissatisfaction has reached the point that many members of the Chamber have withdrawn during the last twelve months. The Chamber should be a growing body, full of life, aggression and enterprise. It cannot afford to be subjected to hypnotic influences.
“Why have an election at all, if nominations are always to be “ratified”?”
Chamber elections can still turn on proxies, endorsements, and the question of who really speaks for a city’s business community; in this case the fight was openly about whether a railroad could sit at the head of the table. Tacoma’s civic organizations have long blurred the line between boosterism and governance, and the argument over who gets to nominate is as current as any factional endorsement fight today.
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