The Capitol Riots: How a Bribery Scandal Shook Washington’s First Legislature

The scenes witnessed at Olympia on Monday and yesterday are calculated to dishearten and disgust every right-minded citizen of this young state, and to incense as well all true Republicans possessed of self-respect and respect for their party. It is due to the reputation of the state that citizens, irrespective of party, shall give emphatic expression of their condemnation of such proceedings, and the future welfare of the party in this state imperatively demands that this course shall be pursued by its reputable newspapers and membership throughout the state.

The world must be given to understand, and that promptly and emphatically, that anarchic tendencies do not prevail in this state of Washington; that the halls of legislation and the state capitol cannot be with impunity converted into a bear garden and scenes of mob violence; that the highest favors of the state and its representation in the highest branch of the national legislature cannot be made the subjects of bribery and corruption.

It will be remembered that the riotous and disgraceful proceedings on Monday had for their only incentive the announcement that of the ninety Republicans in the legislature fifty-seven had signed an agreement to go into caucus for the selection of a party nominee for United States Senator. To take that course is the usual and almost invariable proceeding in such cases. It is in the interest of harmony within the party and the prompt dispatch of business as representatives of the state.

But the scene of yesterday presents even a graver and more humiliating aspect. In the former case some allowance might be made for passion, for hot blood, and for an overpowering intensity of factionalism. But no such allowance, nor any allowance, can be offered in extenuation of the crimes alleged in the course of yesterday's proceedings in the legislature. There can be no greater crime against representative government, no form of moral treason more damnable than is committed by him who enters the legislative halls, bribe in hand, to corrupt the representatives of the people.

Reports from various states have made the public painfully familiar with allegations of such proceedings, but the frequency of such reports has in no degree dulled the public conscience to the enormity of the offense nor disposed the people to condone them. The charges made at Olympia were bold and explicit, and the people of the state have a right to demand that there shall be no temporising in this matter, but that it shall be followed up with relentless vigor, so that this first experience may be a warning against the recurrence of the like, and that the first shall of a verity be the last. The state, the legislature and the Republican party must be fully vindicated in this matter. It is a case in which there is no room for compromise.

Of course, the vote of yesterday practically settled the contest. There is the barest possibility that in joint ballot Squire's vote will be less than in separate session, and every probability that it will be much greater. So far as there is any fear on the part of the friends of Senator Squire it is based upon the fact that the Calkins managers have thrown off all restraint, and are attempting not only by shameless methods of coercion, but by an even more shameless scheme of bribery to carry out their purposes.

The effort of a Calkins agent to corrupt a representative from Stevens county, exposed yesterday before the bar of the House, is a disgrace and a shame to the state of Washington. Those who have done this vile thing should be punished to the full extent of the law, and the citizens of this state will not be satisfied until this is accomplished.