Tacoma’s City Jobs Become a Sectarian Battleground
A Catholic vicar general says the anti-Catholic A.P.A. is driving Catholics off the public payroll—and the fire chief’s firing has the city trading charges.
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 26.—[Special.]—Rev. Peter F. Hylebos, vicar general and rector of St. Leo’s Catholic Church of this city, says:
“It is evident that the influence of the A. P. A. is driving Catholics out of office in this city, and if it is continued, it will ruin the city. Four Catholics were let out yesterday, presumably because they were Catholics. Many others, I am told, are being let out. Is it not apt to arouse very strong feelings in the breast of a man who has a family, and because he brings up his family according to his church he is deprived of earning a living for them? The Swedes seem to constitute the majority of the A. P. A.”
An Irish club has been organized for the purpose of interesting candidates for office in providing places for Catholics. This results principally from the organization of the A. P. A., presumably, as interpreted by the anti-A.P.A.s, for political purposes, and also by the Swedes. By an organization of this nature the Swedes, the Irish claim, have been able to secure such positions as they bargained for before election.
Father Hylebos’ statement followed a general discussion of the letting out of Chief of the Fire Department Lillis, who recently stated to a reporter of the Tacoma bureau of the POST-INTELLIGENCER that he had no doubt that the influence of the A. P. A. was responsible for his removal, albeit intoxication was alleged to be the cause and is so generally understood. Father Hylebos said he had been informed recently by a general agent of fire insurance concerns that Chief Lillis was the best and most efficient officer on the coast. However, Father Hylebos did not consider Lillis a Catholic. He had never seen him in church but once.
Subsequently an investigation was made through the heads of departments to ascertain if any Catholics had been let out. Only in the fire department could any vacancies, caused by the removal of Catholics, be found, and Chief Fireman said regarding these:
“I did not know they were Catholics. Efficiency is the only thing that goes in this department. Of course, in the case of the men let out, it was the result of changes, and not due to any lack of efficiency. We put another company into service, and let out a hose company. It stands to reason that the only proper thing to do is to let out the entire company. There was no discrimination; the company simply went out of service.”
The friends of some of the men let out say they have families, while some of those who were to work are not married.
“It is evident that the influence of the A. P. A. is driving Catholics out of office in this city, and if it is continued, it will ruin the city.”
The A.P.A. was a nativist movement that sought to bar Catholics from public office; Father Hylebos’s protest shows how religious identity became a proxy for who belonged in civic life. The fight over fire department jobs in Tacoma echoes modern debates about representation, patronage, and whether a city’s workforce should look like its people.
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