George F. Cotterill | |
|---|---|
 Cotterillc. 1912 | |
| 29thMayor of Seattle | |
| In office March 18, 1912 – March 16, 1914 | |
| Preceded by | George W. Dilling |
| Succeeded by | Hiram Gill |
| Member of theWashington Senate from the36th district | |
| In office 1907–1911 | |
| Preceded by | Richard M. Kinnear |
| Succeeded by | Daniel Landon |
| Personal details | |
| Born | (1865-11-18)November 18, 1865 |
| Died | October 13, 1958(1958-10-13) (aged 92) Seattle, Washington, U.S. |
| Nationality | English |
| Political party | Republican(before 1900) Democratic(after 1900) |
George Fletcher Cotterill (November 18, 1865 – October 13, 1958), born inOxford, England, was an American civil servant and politician.[1] His public career inSeattle and the state ofWashington lasted over 40 years; Cotterill was aGeorgist[2][3][4]progressive. He was an advocate ofwoman suffrage,prohibition,land value tax,municipalisation of port facilities and utilities, and the development ofpublic parks.[1]
Born in Oxford, England, Cotterill was the son of a gardener Robert Cotterill and his wife Alice.[5] The family immigrated to the United States in May 1872, when he was six, arriving inBoston before settling on a farm inMontclair, New Jersey. After graduating from high school in Montclair—at the young age of 15 and as classvaledictorian—he worked as arod man on a railroad survey, while training to be asurveyor and engineer.[1]
In 1883, he travelled to thePacific Northwest with his father and brother. They had hoped to find work for theNorthern Pacific Railroad, but by the time they arrived the project in question had been suspended. His father and brother headed back East in 1884. Cotterill stayed on and managed to obtain a job as a bookkeeper for theMoran Brothers shipyard in Seattle. Moran and Cotterill would each later serve the city as itsmayor.[1]
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He was not a bookkeeper for long. The growing town and theWashington Territory needed surveyors and engineers. Cotterill laid out the seating diagram forFrye Opera House (Seattle's premier theatre of its time), worked for theColumbia & Puget Sound Railway, theSeattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railway, and eventually for the Northern Pacific when they resumed development in the region. He was involved with the coal mines in Gilman (nowIssaquah, Washington) and Grand Ridge. He surveyed land inWest Seattle (which at that time was not yet part of Seattle proper) and laid out the plan of the city of Sidney (laterPort Orchard) inKitsap County. Most importantly for his future career, though, he worked for City of Seattle SurveyorR. H. Thomson, both as a surveyor and in building the city's first sewers.[1]
He marriedtemperance worker Cora Rowena Gormley on 19 February 1890.[6]
Thomson became City Engineer in 1892 and appointed Cotterill as an assistant. They developed the basis of what remains Seattle's main water supply over a century later (seeSeattle Public Utilities), bringing in water from theCedar River.[1] The financial hurdles were almost as daunting as the technical difficulties. In an 8 July 1889 election,[7] barely a month after theGreat Seattle Fire (6 June 1889) Seattle's citizens had voted 1,875 to 51 to acquire and operate their own water system.[8] However, thePanic of 1893 wrecked the city's finances.[7] Cotterill devised the then-novel plan of borrowing money for the pipeline by pledging the receipts from the water to be delivered when the $1,250,000 system was completed. This brought Cotterill into electoral politics for the first time, supporting his own plan in an 1895special election.[1] TheKlondike Gold Rush put Seattle on a sound economic footing[7] and the 1901 completion of Cedar River Supply System No. 1 (active from 21 February 1901[9]) gave the city a steady supply of clean water.[10]
Other achievements by Thomson and Cotterill in this era included 25 miles of bicycle trails (later the basis of the city'sOlmsted boulevard system) the filling oftideflats that compose much of today'sSoDo andIndustrial District south ofDowntown Seattle, and the development of theplats that still determine the general plan of thepiers on Seattle'sCentral Waterfront. Each pier is more or less aparallelogram. Most earlier piers, none of which survive, formed a perfect right angle to the shore, and the curvature of the shore meant that each pier was at a slightly different angle, causing potential for collisions. Their uniform northeast-southwest direction was prescribed by Thomson and Cotterill not only solved that problem but also spared freight trains from needing to make a sharp right angle.[11][12]
An increasingly prominent figure in the city, Cotterill was soon embroiled in matters unrelated to his technical skills (or even his financial skills)Gold Rush money had turned Seattle into a wide open city:brothels andcasinos flourished, as did concomitant corruption. Cotterill had been aRepublican, but in 1900 he supportedpopulistDemocratWilliam Jennings Bryan for President and ran for mayor of Seattle, nominally as anonpartisan, but effectively as a Democrat. It was not the Democrats' year, and Cotterill lost (as he would also lose aCongressional race two years later). He resigned his city job and resumed private practice.[1]
In 1906, he finally achieved electoral success as one of only three Democrats elected to theWashington State Senate, which then had 42 members. Crossing the aisle, he became the leader of progressive Republicans, and successfully built support for thedirect primary law of 1907. As a legislator, he also backed theLake Washington Ship Canal and helped preserve shorelines for theUniversity of Washington and for city parks. He backedlocal option as a step toward the prohibition of alcohol and drafted an amendment to the state constitution that granted women the right to vote in 1910, a decade ahead of the country at large. He was also instrumental in passing the law that allowed formation of port districts. Theworkman's compensation law he helped to write became a national model.[1]
Cotterill was the Democratic candidate for theUnited States Senate in 1908 and 1910, but lost both races.[5]
Hiram Gill ran successfully for the Seattle mayoralty in 1910 on "open city" platform, defeating real estate man George W. Dilling. Gill opposed municipal ownership of utilities, arguing not only for privatised transit, but for privatised waterworks, and opposing the then-youngSeattle City Light electric utility. He was generally anti-tax and anti-union. Gill reinstalled police chiefCharles "Wappy" Wappenstein, whom Gill's predecessor John F. Miller had dismissed as corrupt. Wappenstein promptly established a regime far more "open" than any that Gill had overtly advocated. Every prostitute in Seattle was expected to pay $10 a month to "Wappy", and the police department made sure they paid.Beacon Hill became home toa 500-room brothel with a 15-year lease from the city.[14] It did not take long for the voters to get fed up, and Gill wasrecalled from office in 1911, though it would not be his last time as mayor. Dilling finished out Gill's term. Wappenstein eventually went to prison.[1]
Gill ran for mayor again in March 1912, and Cotterill ran against him.Seattle Times publisherAlden J. Blethen ardently supported Gill, but Cotterill won.[1] The election wasn't even close, and a third candidate,SocialistHulet Wells, received nearly as many votes as Gill.[15] Reformers, many of them with no party affiliation, formed the majority of theSeattle City Council.Theodore Roosevelt's "Bull Moose" candidacy carried the state in thepresidential election later that year, though Roosevelt did not win the country.[16]
Although in some ways his moment of triumph, Cotterill was by this time, in Roger Sales's words, riding "two horses… moving in different directions". His desire for municipal ownership of utilities and public control of ports allied him with labour and populism; his lifelong Prohibitionist views did not. The Prohibitionist movement was, by this time, aligning itself with issues that wanted small government on most other issues, because they had come to believe that big government inevitably meant corruption. Meanwhile, labour was moving fartherleft, toward socialism and evenanarcho-syndicalism.[17]
Prohibitionism and thetemperance movement had always been at the centre of Cotterill's morality. His parents had been members of theUnited Kingdom Temperance Alliance. During his childhood in England, he attended the Band of Hope, an organisation for children's temperance education. His mother had formed the local chapter. He attended a convention of theInternational Order of Good Templars in 1897 and was involved with the Templars for the rest of his life, serving for a time as Grand Secretary of the Washington State division and later as Chief Templar of the national division. He was a member of theAnti-Saloon League and in 1909, was appointed by PresidentTaft to represent the US at the International Congress against Alcoholism; in 1913 he was reappointed to this role by PresidentWilson.[5]
As mayor, Cotterill instigated an anti-vice campaign that raisedcivil liberties issues, and he soon became embroiled in other issues, as well. There were thousands of vice-related warrantless arrests, and the crackdown on vice may simply have created new and different modes of police corruption.[1]
At this time, Seattle had a big summer celebration known asPotlatch Days, the name deriving from thepotlatch ceremonies of theindigenous peoples of the region. In summer 1913, during the Golden Potlach celebration, Blethen succeeded in stirring up already hot tempers and sparking a riot that destroyed the local offices of theIndustrial Workers of the World and of theSocialist Party. Cotterill shut down the saloons, suspended all street meetings, and attempted to close theSeattle Times. In this last, he was stopped by a judge; he and police chief Claude Bannick nearly found themselves arrested. However, he survived a recall attempt instigated by Blethen.[1][18]
That was hardly the last of the labour troubles Cotterill faced as mayor. Later that year, theTeamstersstruck for union recognition and aclosed shop. Cotterill attempted to remain neutral, which the employers viewed as support for the union.[1]
Rather than seek re-election as mayor, in 1914 Cotterill ran again for theUnited States Senate. Again, he lost. In 1916, he was appointed Chief Engineer of the state highway department. In 1922, he was elected to the first of four three-year terms on theSeattle Port Commission, after which he worked a variety of jobs, including working for theKing County Assessor's Office until retiring at the age of 84.[1][5]
Cotterill seems never to have given up hopes of resuming a career in electoral politics. He ran for governor in 1928 and for at least five various city and state offices between 1932 and 1951. His finances fared poorly in theGreat Depression, which was part of the reason he worked into his 80s. Most likely, he would have worked even longer if the state had not adopted a mandatory retirement law for government employees over 70.[5]
His wife Cora died on 26 February 1936, and he remarried to principal Katherine E. Owen on 18 November 1950.[6][19]
Roughly a decade after his retirement, he died in a Seattle nursing home.[1]
| Party political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by William W. Black | Democratic nominee forU.S. Senator fromWashington (Class 3) 1920 | Succeeded by A. Scott Bullitt |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Mayor of Seattle 1912–1914 | Succeeded by |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
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