International: Brother Bill

All last summer Republicans in Washington gleefully made much of that State’s strife-torn Democratic organization. Last week the G. O. P. suddenly found that it had a full-sized family ruckus of its own in the 2nd Congressional District. There a Methodist preacher named Payson Peterson was running against Democratic Representative Conrad Wallgren, one-time national amateur billiard champion.

Ten times did Republican Peterson of Snohomish go to Seattle to sell State Chairman Jay Noble Emerson, and ten times was he turned away. So Nominee Peterson began crying out at Republican rallies that Chairman Emerson, conservative Pullman merchant, was subtly working for his defeat by withholding campaign cooperation. Last week at a G. O. P. meeting at Bellingham. again outside the doors of a party clam-dinner from the rostrum of which he had been excluded, Rev. Payson Peterson loudly demanded Chairman Emerson’s resignation, charged that Emerson was getting not only his funds but his directions from William Curtise Butler.

Who was William Curtise Butler? Messrs. Peterson and Emerson were fully aware of the significance and stature of this Everett banker who happened to be the brother of the president of Columbia University, but to the State of Washington and the nation at large he was not even a potent name. In fact, Nicholas Murray Butler’s brother is as enigmatic a figure as Sherlock Holmes’s brother Mycroft.*

William Curtise Butler owns a large interest in the First National Bank of Seattle, is president of Everett Trust & Savings Bank and Everett’s First National, controls immense timber interests in western Washington. Though his is one of the Northwest’s big fortunes, his name appears on no door, window or nameplate, identifies no concern, is not listed in Who’s Who or the Everett telephone book. The oldest employe in the First National of Seattle does not know who he is. Yet, through Brother Nicholas, he has selected two of the University of Washington’s presidents. When Chairman Emerson last week declared that he had never even seen Banker Butler, therefore could not be under his influence or in his pay, a few sapient Washingtonians remained unconvinced.

Ever since he went West from New Jersey in the early 1890s by way of the Columbia School of Mines, William Butler has done most of his business through intermediaries. He was first employed by the Rockefellers at the Monte Cristo gold and silver properties near Everett. When the ore deposits proved shallow, he switched to lumber. For years an ally of the mighty Weyerhaeusers, William Butler chose to stick to the comparatively secure logging business, let others do the milling and merchandising. He got the reputation of driving a hard business bargain. A lumberman named Joe Irving, wrathful at being squeezed by Butler, is said to have muscled his way into the financier’s office with a .45, promised Banker Butler: “If I go, you’ll go too.” The story goes that Banker Butler made Joe Irving his partner.

In late years, mysterious Banker Butler has expanded into other phases of the lumber business and, according to local gossip, mellowed. He is still a recluse, living in a mansion overlooking Puget Sound, taking solitary trips East and to California with his wife. And he still conducts his banking business, and his political operations, through close-mouthed Lieutenants. But ever since the death of his only son after a tonsillectomy in 1918, Banker Butler, whom few dare call “Bill” to his face, has been gradually loosening the strings on his money bags. With three others, he built a fine new hospital for Everett. Then pale-haired, ponderous William Butler at 67 committed, for him, the brashest of acts. He gave the Seattle Children’s Orthopedic Hospital $1,000 in his own name.

*Mycroft Holmes, a member of the Diogenes Club and a mysterious but invaluable attache at the Foreign Office, was even smarter than Sherlock, whom he assisted in “The Greek Interpreter.”