Seattle's City Hall Goes Dark After a Bribery Letter Leaks

City Clerk Stewart is in something of a quandary concerning his privilege relative to an order issued him by the board of aldermen a week ago. When E. F. Wittler's letter to the council, denying Alderman J. E. Jordan's charge that Wittler had offered him a bribe in the shape of a life pass and $500 in gold, arrived, the city clerk filed it and made an entry of the fact in a minute book kept for that purpose. Reporters and others noticing the entry asked for the papers and were allowed to look at them, with the result that the letter was published before it came up officially before the board. Alderman Jordan was very wrathy, and he introduced a resolution at a meeting of the board of aldermen instructing the clerk not to permit any one to see official business for that body until after it had come up in the council, which was passed.

The clerk is carrying out the instructions of the council, although he is not quite sure as to the authority or the right of the aldermen to make the order. All communications and petitions now filed are stowed away in the dark, no entry being made in the minute book, and no one knows what the clerk has until all the documents are read before the aldermen at the regular weekly meetings.

The system made necessary by the order is inconvenient to the clerk and not very pleasant for the outsiders, who declare that everything filed in the office should be treated as public property at any and all times, and that every taxpayer has a right during office hours to inspect public documents filed at a public office. No serious objection was yet met with, because no one knows what is going on and consequently no one knows what is going on.