The Real Fight at City Hall Was Never About the Nominee — It Was About the City Engineer
A routine appointment to the board of public works turned into a proxy war over R. H. Thomson, whose appointment a year earlier had ended Edwin Hall Warner's brief and bitter tenure as Seattle's city engineer.
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.
Interest in the nomination of John O. Scurry for the position on the board of public works about to be vacated by Andrew Jackson has reached the high water mark at the city hall, and it is definitely known that certain members of the board of aldermen who are opposed to the administration are going to do all in their power to defeat his confirmation, which is to be voted on Monday evening.
The fight is not so much on Mr. Scurry himself as it is on City Engineer Thomson, the prejudice against the latter dating back to the time when Edwin Hall Warner was removed and Mr. Thomson appointed. It will be remembered that when Mr. Jackson was appointed on the board of public works a year ago, City Engineer Warner's lease of life in the office was confined to a few hours; his removal was safe and summary. A certain faction of Democrats have never forgotten or forgiven Mr. Jackson for the part he played at that time, and he owes his recent defeat for re-appointment to this element in local politics.
They oppose Mr. Thomson because he accepted the position from which Mr. Warner was removed. The opposition to Mr. Scurry can be easily explained, for it is believed he is favorable to Mr. Thomson continuing in office, while his enemies want a man for member of the board who will vote to remove him and place in the position a man more favorable to the methods of their contingent of the Democratic party.
“The fight is not so much on Mr. Scurry himself as it is on City Engineer Thomson.”
A nomination that looks clerical on its face is really a fight over who controls the city's engineering department — and the patronage that comes with it. Seattle has never stopped having this argument; it has merely renamed the offices. R. H. Thomson, the engineer at the center of it, went on to shape the Cedar River water supply and much of the city's public works.
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