Tacoma’s Missing Warrant Book and the Forgery Scandal at City Hall
A former assistant city clerk had already been sent to prison. Now his talk of accomplices had Tacoma officials eyeing a missing warrant book and city paper selling at a steep discount in Chehalis.
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, July 20.—[Special.]—Since ex-Assistant City Clerk McCain has shown a disposition to implicate others in the forgery of city warrants, for which he has been sentenced to a term in the penitentiary, there has been some apprehension among persons supposed to be possessed of guilty knowledge regarding the forgeries. Some time before the forged warrants were discovered, and before the book of warrants was missing, there was a man connected with the city treasurer's office who, according to a city councilman, tried to enter into the warrant-writing business through a woman. "Until I know how that man came by the warrant which was offered for sale," said the councilman at the time, "I will not be satisfied about the disappearance of the book of warrants." The statement made several weeks ago in the Tacoma Ledger that Tacoma city warrants are offered for sale at nearly 50 percent discount at Chehalis has never been explained. McCain's attorney says when he gets ready to talk he will tell the truth.
“Until I know how that man came by the warrant which was offered for sale, I will not be satisfied about the disappearance of the book of warrants.”
A city clerk forging warrants and a missing warrant book sound like a modern municipal audit nightmare. The case shows how public trust can be corroded not only by the crime but by the suspicion that others in city offices knew more than they said—and by the silence of the people who could explain it.
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