A Sealed Letter and a Fired Public Works Commissioner

Tacoma, May 11.—Mayor Orr today appointed H. B. Mullen, a prominent citizen at the north end, to the board of public works, to succeed David L. Demorest, whose term had expired. The mayor sent Mullen's name to the council this afternoon and asked for immediate confirmation, saying that many important matters were coming before the board.

The charter requires appointments to lie over for one week unless an emergency is declared. An attempt to declare an emergency failed on a tie vote after the Populists objected in order to give time for a caucus, so the appointment goes over for a week.

During the meeting Councilman Bulger asked whether any communication had been received from the board of public works about the mayor's attempt to remove Demorest. City Clerk Smyth replied that a letter had been handed to him by a board member, but that it was addressed to him personally and was "couched in language not respectful to the administration," so he had not read it. He said the letter was then in the mayor's hands.

The Post-Intelligencer correspondent later obtained a press copy of the letter. It was addressed plainly to the city council, not to Smyth. It said that on May 8 Demorest had gone to City Attorney Wickersham's office at Wickersham's request, taking the contract with Dickinson & Co. for extension of the water plant. Wickersham asked Demorest to tell Councilman Cavender that Wickersham was withholding approval because he doubted the board's power to make the contract, and that politics had nothing to do with it. Demorest refused, saying he did not believe politics were absent from the refusal, that he did not approve of "that rotten way of doing business," and that "there had been too much of it during the past year."

An hour later, Demorest said, he found at his own office a letter from the mayor notifying him that he had been removed because his term had expired and ordering him to turn over the board's property. Demorest replied that he was willing to go on with the administration but could not surrender the property until a successor was appointed. The letter had been given to Smyth sealed, with instructions not to open it until it came up in the regular order; Smyth insisted he had not read it to the council. A mayor's letter notifying the council of Demorest's removal was also received.