The Riotous Mock Legislature of 1886
A railroad-backed lobby, frustrated by their political losses at the Olympia legislative session, staged a rowdy mock government to harass and demean King County representatives.
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.
Shortly before the meeting of the Legislature, the Northern Pacific Railroad Company and the Oregon Railway and Navigation Company pooled issues in organizing a strong lobby to be present at Olympia during the session to work for the defeat of any and all measures tending to relieve the people of the wrongs perpetrated upon them by the railroad companies. The principal work this lobby was required to perform was to defeat the repeal of the gross earnings tax law, which exempts from taxation all the property owned by a company operating a railroad in the Territory.
It is openly charged that Mr. Young would carry these bills directly to the headquarters of the railroad lobby, where one of the attorneys comprising the lobby would prepare his report for him. Every bill which had for its object the best interests of the people, and which affected the railroads in the slightest degree, was killed by the famous 'seven' in the Council.
This brings us down to the disgraceful insult to King County. During the session, Judge Lewis in particular and the whole King County delegation poured hot shot into this unscrupulous lobby and its masters, aiders and abettors, and of course incurred the dislike of this set of men. On the evening of the close of the session, at 8 o’clock, one of the railroad members of the Council moved to take a recess till 10:30 at night. The motion carried, and no sooner had the members left their seats than a lot of the railroad strikers, with T. H. Cavanaugh at their head, took possession of the Council chamber to hold a mock Legislature. Cavanaugh was elected President, and a little fellow from Whatcom named De Mattos was elected Governor. He proceeded to read a prepared script full of the coarsest jokes and vilest utterances toward Seattle, King County, and the representatives of this county. While this was doing, a big, fat, drunken fellow gathered together a mob of hangers and hoodlums and hanged Judge Lewis in effigy to a lamppost in the streets of Olympia.
“The proud boast of your hospitality to strangers and visitors... has thus been trampled in the dust by a crowd of worthless hoodlums.”
This 1886 account of corporate lobbyists staging a 'mock legislature' to sabotage regional tax reform echoes contemporary tensions regarding the outsized influence of corporate interests in Olympia. The performative harassment of local lawmakers in the name of industry protection remains a persistent feature of Washington State’s political landscape.
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