The Midnight Cash-Out at the N.P. Bar
A local saloon proprietor vanished with the entire week's payroll just before payday.
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.
Thrusting the entire cash contents of the saloon safe, amounting to $3,000, into a valise, William Dawne, one of the proprietors of the N.P. bar at 328 Puyallup avenue, slipped away from the saloon at midnight last night and boarded a train for Portland, according to a report made to the police today. He has not been seen since, although the police of the southern part of the state and of Oregon have been notified. The cash had been drawn from the bank yesterday so that the saloon would be able to cash the checks of the Northern Pacific employes today. According to other members of the firm, it is unusual to have such a large quantity of cash in the safe at one time. Dawne lived at 406 East Twenty-eighth street.
“The cash had been drawn from the bank yesterday, so that the saloon would be able to cash the checks of the Northern Pacific employes today.”
Payroll theft was a recurring anxiety in a town defined by the boom-and-bust cycles of industrial labor. While digital banking has changed how we move money, the vulnerability of working-class neighborhoods to sudden financial flight remains a familiar Tacoma narrative.
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