The Great Tacoma Spring Cleaning
Mayor Linck threatens arrests as the city scrambles to scrub up before an upcoming exposition.
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.
Tacoma is about to have a spring cleaning. Dr. Sargentich, the health officer, says he has been trying to make the people clean up, but he has not enough help to do it. Dr. Armstrong, the councilman, says the police force ought to be drafted into service and compelled to assist in ordering the town cleaned. The Anti-Compulsory Vaccination society has started a crusade for a clean Tacoma to eliminate the source of disease so vaccination will not be needed. This morning Mayor Linck declared he would see to it that the city is cleaned. 'I am going to demand that everybody clean up. All yards must be cleaned and rubbish removed before the visitors at the exposition arrive,' said the Mayor. 'If necessary we will arrest people who do not comply with the order.' The Anti-Vaccination society has offered a prize of $1 to the boy who will report the vacant lot where there is the largest number of old tin cans. The society will investigate the reports of the boys and submit them to the council.
“I am going to demand that everybody clean up. All yards must be cleaned and rubbish removed before the visitors at the exposition arrive.”
Tacoma's seasonal tension between public health mandates and civic aesthetics is a century-old tradition. Today, the debate over how to manage urban blight and sanitation continues, albeit with less focus on boy-scout-led 'can-hunting' and more on complex zoning and waste management policies.
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