The Cushman House 
LAKE CUSHMAN, WASH. 
Mar. 15, 1914. 
Seattle has had her election and the Lake Cushman 
bonds failed to pass. It was a pretty close call and I am afraid 
it will come up again in the future. I had a call from the Taxation 
Committtee of the Chamber of Commerce to appear before them and as 
an outsider who had a there ugh kniwlege of the country ana the in¬ 
sufficient study of the Engineering Dept, and tell what I knew of 
it. I spent a week there during which time I was interviewed by the 
papers and saw ma$y of the leading men of the City. The conditions 
are us follows, Seattle is a big citynwith a tremendous floating 
population which will vote for anything which will tend towards 
spending public money. Also it has a large socialistic element 
which tends towards public ownership of everything. There is also 
incidentally a large bonded debt, and a tax levy of about 44 mills 
for the present year. The City Treasurer sent out the tax bills# a 
few days before election, and that was all that ever saved us. 
The local branch of the Stone & Webster interests, the Puget Sound 
Light Traction & Power Co. which pa^ts $900,000 taxes in this state 
was particularly active in the campaign and 1 had several consulta¬ 
tions with their officials. They contended that the City had no 
right .to tax them to support a municipal plant which was in direct 
competition with them,and whose service cost the city $75,000 a 
year more than they had offered tc furnish it for. But the bogie 
of the heartless corporation made some 20,000/ people vote for 
the bonds. 
One veiy amusing thing happened. The two leading papers, 
the Post-Intelligencer and the Times, 
Dear Mr. Deane 
published interviews with me, 
