A Political Uproar at City Hall
Fairhaven Democrats storm City Hall to protest a federal appointment, signaling deep fractures within the county machine.
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.
Last night a meeting was held at the City Hall in Fairhaven to protest against the appointment of Martin J. Maloney as deputy collector of customs at that port. The meeting was unanimous against Maloney and his appointment. The room, it is understood, was blue with the smoke of denunciation, and hot words circulated through the atmosphere of the City Hall. Down below there was a citizen meeting and a roll call, and the spectators looked on and applauded the orators in the open hall. Stiff-necked Democrats filled the floors and corridors, and not one of those present who felt not indignant in their heart could be found, and Maloney was the chief object. No Democrat who could not pronounce with emphatic fire the name of the new deputy collector could enter there. And it is said that the mention of his name was accompanied by—well, not by benedictions. A remonstrance was drawn up, signed, and it will be forwarded to Secretary of the Treasury Carlisle. And now Collector Sanders, Hash Wallace and the rest of the machine do not stand very high in the estimation of the flower of the Whatcom County Democracy. But Maloney has the office all the same.
“The room, it is understood, was blue with the smoke of denunciation, and hot words circulated through the atmosphere of the City Hall.”
This 1893 skirmish over patronage and local control in Fairhaven (now part of Bellingham) mirrors the perennial friction between grassroots party activists and political power brokers in Pacific Northwest cities.
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