A Rancher's Revenge: Peaches, Borers, and Everett's Blind Eye to Gambling
When Everett's fruit inspector condemned 40 boxes of a Pateros orchardist's peaches for pests, J. H. Partley fired back with a blistering question: why enforce the fruit laws to the letter while the city's gambling dens run wide open?
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.
A rancher near Pateros recently sent 100 boxes of peaches to Everett, and the fruit inspector condemned 40 boxes because they were infected with peach twig borers. The honest rancher, whose name is J. H. Partley, gets on his feet and in a loud voice gives Everett one of the strongest roastings it has received in many a day. In part he said: "I came over here with 100 boxes of peaches to establish business relations with the city, and you go after me with a rigid enforcement of the law regarding infected fruit. Very good. The borer and other fruit pests are a bad thing and should be exterminated. But how about the enforcement of laws in general? Gambling joints flourish from one end of the city to the other. Gamblers, grafters, sandbaggers, thieves and crooks of all kinds evidently find no interference with their traffic, but when a poor rancher comes to town with the product of his honest toil, you hand it to him right to the letter of the law."
“Gambling joints flourish from one end of the city to the other... but when a poor rancher comes to town with the product of his honest toil, you hand it to him right to the letter of the law.”
Partley's complaint is a timeless one: the small producer gets the book thrown at him while bigger, more profitable vices are quietly tolerated. A century later, the argument over who gets regulated strictly and who gets a pass still shapes how cities police everything from street vendors to developers.
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