The Speaker’s High-Stakes Balancing Act
Speaker Meigs stacks the House Public Morals Committee with an even split of prohibitionists and anti-prohibitionists, leaving the committee’s crucial legislative decisions deadlocked.
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.
Olympia, Jan. 19—Speaker Meigs, in the appointment of his public morals committee, ran as close to the line of division between the stringent and anti-stringent as was possible. His aim was evidently to please both sides, and as usual, the result is that neither is satisfied. The public morals committee will get the local option and the race track bills for consideration, and the recommendations, amendments, etc., the committee makes are generally supposed to have a serious effect on the action of the house as a whole. The committee is composed of: Stringents, John Anderson, Whalley, McClure and H. W. Thompson; anti-stringents, Norris, Anderson (W. T.), Hayward and Erickson. Fisher of Port Angeles is the ninth and odd member of the committee, and he is the doubtful one. Both sides claim Fisher, so on the face of it the committee stands 4.5 to 4.5, which is all right in common fractions, but wrong in legislation.
“The committee stands 4 1/2 to 4 1/2, which is all right in common fractions, but wrong in legislation.”
The tension between 'stringent' moral legislation and local economic interests remains a staple of Washington politics. In 1909, this played out over local option liquor laws; today, the 'moral' legislative battles in Olympia often revolve around zoning, taxation, and public safety mandates that similarly divide urban and rural districts.
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