Fighting Tailor

Bremerton, Wash. (pop. 11,053) is notable for its thriving U. S. Navy Yard and for its mayor, who rivals his State's late Congressman Marion Anthony Zioncheck as a wagging political cap-&-bells. When bespectacled little Tailor Jesse A. Knabb lost a mayoralty election in 1933, he jumped off a Bremerton dock before a battery of newsreel cameras. When he won the next one in 1936, his behavior became even stranger. Up to last week eccentric Mayor Knabb had made news by:

P:Challenging City Prosecutor Ralph E. Purves to a boxing match. When Prosecutor Purves declined, the mayor for no good reason boxed four well-photographed rounds with a Masked Marvel, knocked the Marvel down four times.

P:Having Editor Julius Gius of the Scripps League Bremerton Sun and six other leading citizens who have been campaigning for his recall arrested for criminal conspiracy, accusing them of trying to bribe him, kill him, frame him with a brunette "mystery woman" in a Seattle hotel.

Last week. Mayor Knabb was in the hottest water ever, but still fighting happily. Indictments brought by Prosecutor Purves 1) charged him with accepting a bribe from a slot-machine operator, 2) accused him and the city garbage superintendent of trying to extort $5,000 from Bremerton's No. 1 Citizen, Edward Bremer, in blackmail over a girl. Released on $5,000 bail, Mayor Knabb was promptly greeted by a Better Bremerton League headed by the town's principal ministers, asked to "observe the moral laws as well as the civil laws." Babbled Jesse Knabb: "Aw, those pitiful ministers, one is a Holy Roller and the other is a dead beat. I'm going to start a recall against Purves. Why, these charges are practically nothing at all. I can't get the drift of it."

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