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6. The Progressive Era, a Crusading Sheriff, and the County Fair Begins (1902-1914)
- Oregon State University Press
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42 6 the ProgressIVe era, a CrusadIng sherIff, and the County faIr BegIns (1902–1914) the first dozen years of the twentieth century brought startling political changes at every level of American government. theodore roosevelt, at the time the youngest man to serve as president, took office in 1901 following the assassination of William McKinley, bringing with him new, young minds who sought to break the stranglehold of business trusts on the national economy. In Oregon, a persistent Portland lawyer, William S. U’ren, doggedly fought to install a series of laws aimed at giving the state’s voters more power at the expense of entrenched and often corrupt political power brokers. the initiative, referendum, and recall processes championed by U’ren, as well as a Corrupt Practices Act,1 won national acclaim as the “Oregon System.” In Portland, a new afternoon newspaper founded in 1902, the Oregon Journal, championed reformers and their causes and placed greater emphasis on local issues on its front page than the stodgier Oregonian, which backed the old-line political wheeler-dealers. At city hall, a man who was a relic from the pioneer era won election as mayor in 1902, but even 79-year-old George h. Williams took a reformer’s tack in the campaign. he ran on a platform of beautifying the city and cracking down on Portland’s long-standing illegal gambling and prostitution businesses. Williams had been an often respected and sometimes despised figure, dating back to when he served as a judge of the Oregon territory and a voting member of the 1857 Oregon Constitutional Convention.2 Williams’s argument at the convention that it was cheaper for farmers to hire labor than to provide lifetime care for slaves helped convince Oregonians to enter the Union as a free state. Williams served as a U.S. senator from 1865 to 1871 and as U.S. Attorney General under President Ulysses S. Grant. In 1874, Grant nominated Williams to be Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but Williams withdrew after the nomination resulted in political, personal, and professional attacks. his tenure as the progressIVe era, a crusadIng sherIff . . . 43 Portland mayor generated his final controversy. rather than trying to eliminate vice, Williams had set up a system under which illegal businesses made regular payments to city coffers to keep on operating.3 Portland was experiencing a “highly charged evangelical revival” at this time. A Presbyterian minister accused Oregonian editor harvey Scott of helping to “fasten gambling and prostitution on the city of Portland.” A young baptist minister attacked Mayor Williams in sermons titled “the Mayor of Sodom,” “Our City’s Crimes and Criminals,” and “What Shall It Profit a City to License Crime?”4 the real reformer proved to be a county official rather than a city one. the six candidates on the 1904 ballot for Multnomah County sheriff included reformer tom Word and the incumbent sheriff, William Storey. Word won with more than a two-thousand vote edge over his nearest competitors, James Stott and Nathan bird, both of whom received more votes than Storey.5 During his successful campaign, Word pledged to crack down on vice. Portland then had “five of the biggest gambling houses in the United States running wide open,” in the words of Portland Telegram writer Dean Collins.6 Word’s supporters included the ministerial alliance and its member churches, the Municipal Club, and the owner of the Orpheum theater, who wanted either a gambling license for his theater or for all other (illegal) gambling houses to be shut down. Sheriff Word wasted little time in carrying out his campaign pledge. Just days after he was sworn in, Word arrested four of the city’s major gamblers. Five days later, he closed all gambling houses in Portland, invading Portland Police Department territory to do so. his closures included the Orpheum theater (whose owner had helped him get elected), all Chinese lotteries and fantan games, the Portland Club (where marked cards were discovered), and poker games that were operating freely everywhere in the city.7 Understandably, Word’s actions precipitated a thunderous uproar. Some seven hundred people were put out of work when the gambling houses were shut down, and Portland city government lost $5,000 in monthly revenue. (the city was charging gambling houses hefty business license fees while city police looked the other way.) Almost immediately, recall petitions started circulating against Sheriff Word and District Attorney John Manning, who had issued the...