Tacoma’s Power Vote: The Times Calls Out the Trust
On the eve of a city election, The Tacoma Times urges a vote for the municipal Nisqually power project and accuses the private power interests of a campaign of falsehood.
Tomorrow’s election is as vitally important to the people of Tacoma as the carrying of the power plant project. It is the repudiation of the false and treacherous campaign that has been waged against it by the power trust gang. If a campaign of this character can win, then—but we have little fear of the outcome tomorrow. We believe the people are not only brave enough to see the fraud the power trust gang has attempted to practice on them but brave enough to smite it at the polls tomorrow and let the world know that falsehood and misrepresentation are not the potent forces in Tacoma.
The very fact that the opponents of the power plant project of the city have resorted to falsehood and deception is evidence that their cause is rotten. A good cause does not need to be bolstered by misrepresentation. A bad one has to depend on deceiving the honest and misleading them.
From the time the trust gang started with the statement that nothing was known about this Nisqually power project the city was going to get, to the outrageous lie that the present city plant—which cleared a net profit of $130,000 last year—is losing money, the argument against the power project has been one tissue of misrepresentation and falsehood.
The Chamber of Commerce investigated the whole case. It declared the statements of the trust gang false by declaring for the project. The Commercial Club did the same. The improvement club with one voice repudiated the fraud of the trust gang, and the people are going to do the same tomorrow.
But it ought to be done with a will. The power plant project ought to carry 20 to 1 tomorrow. Let’s show the world that Tacoma is wise enough to know a good thing and honest enough to repudiate falsehood in a way that it will know it is repudiated.
Every man who was registered for the last November election is eligible to vote tomorrow, and it is his duty to exercise his franchise. The outcome is vastly more important to Tacoma than a city, county or state election.
“A good cause does not need to be bolstered by misrepresentation. A bad one has to depend on deceiving the honest and misleading them.”
The fight over whether Tacoma should generate its own power—and how private utility interests fought back—is an ancestor of today’s public-utility and energy-ballot battles. The editorial’s charges of misinformation, business-group endorsements and urgent get-out-the-vote appeals could be lifted into a modern municipal election.
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