Article from Butte County Democrat and Rancher -- “Biggs Electric Utility Vote an Event.” Printed February 28, 1923, by L.J. Von Kanel
Bribery, Corruption, Scandal Taint Biggs Council Vote; Private Interests Defeated; Councilman Resigns
At Biggs Tuesday last (26 February), a great conflagration enveloped, in the metaphorical sense, the meeting of the Council of that City over the issue of electrification.
It is known well that in Biggs, “The People Own the Water” and the People of that hamlet are determined to defend such ownership, it seems, to the defiance of the statutes of the State and the supplications of the Western Light and Power Company, and to extend it to the Electric Power as well.
It was when Mayor Meyer called the order on Item 3, an effort to sell the right to develop the electric power supply of the City, that the debate erupted feverishly. It was known before the meeting that the Mayor and Councilor DeRomidi were in favor of selling the rights, and Councilman DeRomidi has made in these pages the argument that the small municipal treasury cannot stand the strain that bonding for power lines up from Gridley or down from the hydro-dams in the Mountains and then extending those lines within incorporated Biggs.
Councilman Schurle, whom your correspondent has heard making remarks favorable to the Bolshevik Cause in the nations of Europe during the late World War, was opposed to the sale, arguing in less-reputable news outlets than this humble broadsheet that the water right pumped and sold to Rice men in the outlying territory in dry years would quickly pay the bonds (though your correspondent doubts the veracity of that claim). Councilman Rabun was also known to be opposed, on principle, that the People should own all utilities.
All parties at the meeting, for and against, thus offered their arguments in the direction of Councilman Hans Oberrhiner, who was thought at the time to have been undecided. Citizens spoke for nearly an hour, encouraging, cajoling, threatening, and rumbling their fists at Councilman Oberrhiner.
Some of the newly-enfranchised members of the fairer sex were present as well, and Ms. Angela Luchiano, queen of the 1920 Rice Pageant, 1920 Valedictorian of Biggs-and-District High School and current student at the State Normal School in Chico, had organized some of her classmates of voting age into the “Ladies’ Farm Power Society” all of whom wore massive rosettes or hatpins in the shape of electric lightbulbs and spoke with the same robustness as their gentleman companions. Ms. Luchiano and Mrs. Donald Ross in particular spoke with flagrant passion and robustness about how a City-owned power company would benefit the ladies in doing the household chores or educating the children. They were opposed by Mrs. August, who argued to sell the right and get the lines earlier.
The great commotion arose when the respected Doctor Wong Zee Zee rose and walked to the speakers’ podium after most everyone else in the room had said his piece. It is known to the community that Dr. Wong works in the high hills in the Weaverville area, keeping the industrious Chinese lumbermen working for their companies in the last place they are still needed in this section of California. There was a great commotion behind the Council desk as Councilmember Oberrhiner invoked the State Constitution’s bar to the testimony of members of the Chinese Race. This aroused a great suspicion, as Dr. Wong’s son is the operator of Rice Dragon restaurant serving Chinese and American food on B Street (which does much successful advertising with this newspaper, please see their coupon on page 3 of this edition) and the good Doctor has in the past treated successfully the pandemic influenza from Weaverville all the way through to Gridley, his patients having far less deaths than those ministered to by medical men of the white race.
Councilmember Oberrhiner’s objection seemed unusually vehement and out of place to the testimony of a man who, while not a member of the community, was in it often enough to be known by his name, and whose English, incidentally, is less accented than that of the bloviating Councilmember, but the reason soon became apparent after Mayor Meyer overruled the objection, accurately concluding that a council meeting was not a court of law, and they could hear from any Citizen, and since it was known that Dr. Wong was a member of the Trinity County Republican Party, he must likely be a Citizen, for no one would otherwise admit Republican sympathies in that section of the state, and it is known that the Chinese who are citizens usually hold Republican sympathies due to the public sympathies that the late Republican Senator John Conness had for their race.
When Dr. Wong began to speak, the story he unspooled defied all expectation. It seems, according to the good Doctor, that he was in Red Bluff to celebrate the Celestial New Year with several thousand of his countrymen, it being the year of the boar and hogs being plentiful in that city. Dr. Wong had repaired to the Heaven Palace restaurant to read the Sing Tao Weekly (Dr. Wong went on a long soliloquy here about the foods he had eaten, including a type of pork dumpling, a dish of pork cooked slowly with green peppers fresh-picked from a greenhouse for the New Year, and a dish he insisted on describing in exquisite detail and which he said was exotic and known only to him from his extensive travels in his own country for medical training as a young man, which he called “pig cooked two times” and he had to be reminded by Mayor Meyer that an hour of public input had already been taken). Dr. Wong described that as the slices of orange from the Los Angeles groves were put out on his plate, two white men came in, and sat in the booth next to his. One of them (he could not tell which) made a joke about an “illiterate celestial” he said, and so he decided to listen to their conversation and perhaps set them straight.
It is known that the white citizens of this section often repair to Chinese restaurants when they wish to speak in private, so few of the men of that race being conversant in much English. The testimony of Dr. Wong supported that idea, for the Doctor went on to say that he heard the men converse without fear of being overheard about Electric power, with one man saying that he had swindled the City of Red Bluff just the previous night. Apparently the Council was so aggrieved by the sound of firecrackers that they had voted to approve the sale of the municipal utility rights without looking closely at the contract, the man said, and he had inserted a clause making the City government responsible for the cost of any future repairs to any part of the lines that fed the city its power. He then offered the other man five hundred dollars to vote to sell the rights in Biggs (there was an audible gasp) and the man agreed. The first man offered a subsequent one thousand dollars to force the vote on the contract through without reading, so that the same clause could be included. The second man said he was not sure of that, and so the first man offered him a total of Two Thousand Dollars, and a new automobile. The second man agreed, stated Dr. Wong.
Dr. Wong then looked at the Council and raised his hand and said “I did not know the men then, but my son said I must come here and tell you the story and see if I recognized any of them here. One of them is that fellow with the small mustache” and he pointed at Councilmember Oberrhiner.
There was a great commotion instantly, papers were thrown and fisticuffs broke out, and Dr. Wong had to be escorted from the room by Sheriff’s Deputy Lorenzo Magee and taken across the street to his son’s restaurant (where he dined on a fine meal of pork cooked slowly in a mild gravy with fresh strips of green pepper, this week 25 cents off with coupon from this newspaper) for his own protection. Mayor Meyer put the council into recess and returned half an hour later having found the offending clause in the proposed contract.
The Mayor on seeing the clause had a change of heart and voted for the Municipal Bond instead of the sale, reasoning that if the company was willing to try to cheat them so soon, when they had a vise grip on the illumination of the city they would have no reason to negotiate in better faith, and Councilmen DeRomidi followed his lead. In disgrace, Councilmember Oberrhiner abstained, and it is believed he is now endeavoring to sell both his home in town and his holdings along Oroville Pike. Deputy Magee and Police Chief Schmitt arrested three men for breach of the peace for the fisticuffs at the meeting, but all were released having had some time to cool down.
And so now Biggs will have to change the motto of the town to “Where The People Own the Water AND the Power.”
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