Why is the City Buying Eastern Hydrants?
A citizen questions why the city administration is shipping tax money to Michigan for inferior equipment when local iron workers remain idle.
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.
Some few days ago the board of public works advertised for bids to furnish fifty hydrants for use in Seattle. There were three responses, as follows: Washington Iron Works, $41.75; Vulcan Iron Works, $40.75; Michigan Iron Works, $56.15. The contract was let to the highest bidders, to-wit, the Michigan Iron Works, at a cost of $14.40 above the home bids, with freight added. Will the 'reform' administration arise and explain to a tax-ridden city their reasons for paying $56.15 to an Eastern firm for a hydrant which is well known to be vastly inferior to those made at the Washington Iron Works in Seattle? Is this the way we encourage home industry? Is this a proper use of the public money, recklessly squandered to hold up Eastern corporations, while our own iron-molders, many of whom are taxed to raise this money, are forced to walk the streets of Seattle in idleness?
“Speak, speak up loudly; speak so that we may all hear.”
This 1894 dispute over municipal procurement and local labor protections mirrors modern-day debates in Seattle about whether city projects should prioritize local union shops and domestic manufacturing over the lowest-bidder contracts that prioritize distant conglomerates.
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