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100 years ago, as told in the Vancouver Columbian
International stories of the bitter fighting in World War I peppered the news on a daily basis 100 years ago this week, but things were calmer closer to home.
It was a different world, yet somehow familiar in 1914. Issues of prohibition, minimum wage and growing university enrollment filled the headlines — topics that are still often discussed, even if the modern prohibition under debate is marijuana rather than alcohol.
Christmas charity, the giving of food and gifts to those less fortunate, reigned throughout the week, as is still common today. Santa appeared at the State School for the Deaf by popping out of a barrel to surprise the children, and the Salvation Army handed out baskets laden with “chickens, bread, butter, coffee, pies, fruit, potatoes and all necessary fixings for a Christmas dinner” to poor families.
Vancouver residents got a rare three day weekend for Christmas in a time when the work week typically spanned six days. At Vancouver Barracks, though, soldiers’ holidays were tinged with sadness — after a band of thieves made off with 150 pounds of bacon stored in the garrison.
Here’s more on those and other stories that made the headlines during the holiday week in 1914:
Prohibition
Back in 1914, the battle to ban alcohol had already begun in Clark County, well before the federal ban began in 1920.
In the November election, residents voted for the county to go dry as of Jan. 1, 1915, a move that was knocked down in federal court after the Northern Brewing Company (the Ohio-based owner of Vancouver’s Star Brewery) and other local businesses asked for an injunction.
Judge E.E. Cushman in Tacoma granted a restraining order that prohibited city and county officials from closing saloons and breweries before Jan. 1, 1916 — the date for statewide prohibition — giving businesses a year to transition.
“The whole state is voting for the prohibition law, plainly made the provision of the bill operative in 1916, giving the saloons a year to adjust their business,” Cushman ruled. “It seems to me to admit of no other interpretation and I will grant a restraining order asked by the complaint.”
There were six party tickets on the ballot that year, including two with the sole purpose of banning alcohol: Republican, Democrat, Socialist, Progressive, Independent Statewide Prohibition and Prohibition.
As prohibition supporters continued their efforts, though, some businesses and citizens pushed back. The state Hotelman’s Association announced that week that it was preparing a bill for the 1915 election that would allow liquor sales by hotels with 50 or more rooms and would allow breweries to continue operations.
On Jan. 1, 1915, because of the Cushman ruling, the Vancouver city council allowed renewals and transfers of liquor licenses to move forward for several local businesses, including Northern Brewing Company and the Log Cabin Saloon, a popular watering hole for soldiers serving at Vancouver Barracks.
The fight over alcohol made almost daily headlines in the Vancouver Columbian in 1914 and 1915. Back then, though, marijuana was perfectly legal, and used in some over-the-counter medications. It wasn’t tightly regulated in Washington until 1923, following a national trend to classify it as a poison.
And, in a flip on today’s federal ban on marijuana, back then former President William H. Taft warned that federal bans on alcohol would lead to nothing but trouble.
“It would revolutionize the national government, it would put on the shoulders of the government the duty of sweeping the doorsteps of every home in the land,” Taft said in a speech on Jan. 4, 1915.
“National prohibition is non-enforceable; it is a confession on the part of state governments of inability to control and regulate their own especial business and duty; if the matter were placed under federal control, it would result in creation of a machinery of government officials large enough to nominate any president, and would offer too great an opportunity to persons seeking to perpetuate their power in Washington.”
The great bacon heist
Meanwhile at Vancouver Barracks, a sizzling crime of passion was revealed.
Miscreant thieves broke into the garrison storehouse and stole more than 150 pounds of delicious bacon from our boys in olive drab.
Two of the thieves, Henry Noyes, a soldier in the 21st Infantry, and Roy Bigabee, an “ex-deserter from the Army,” were arrested in late December for the deed, which occurred on Dec. 2. Noyes was taken to the garrison guardhouse for discipline, while Bigabee was taken to county jail on vagrancy charges while he waited to be tried by a federal grand jury in Tacoma.
On Dec. 31, another conspirator was revealed to be part of the plot.
The day after Christmas, a story in the Vancouver Columbian noted that E.P. “Frenchie” Shelair, a man arrested for drunkenness and vagrancy, was allowed out of jail in the midst of his 30-day sentence for a one-day parole so he could spend Christmas with his friends.
He returned to authorities the next day as promised, but at the end of December authorities learned that he, too, was involved in the nefarious bacon heist. Shelair, described as an “ex-soldier,” was transferred with Bigabee to the federal court. Noyes was tried before a court martial at Vancouver Barracks.
The ultimate fate of the bacon, though, remains a mystery — or at least wasn’t revealed in any news stories at the time.
The six-day work week
Back in 1914, people in the United States generally worked a six-day work week, from Monday through Saturday. The five-day work week wasn’t adopted nationally until 1940.
Holiday closures were a bit different in Vancouver that year as well. The Post Office was open for two hours on Christmas Day and through the morning of Dec. 26, which had been declared a legal holiday by Washington Gov. Ernest Lister. Deliveries were made on those days to “prevent the accumulation of mail in the office,” according to the paper.
In Vancouver, banks, the court house and other government agencies were closed on Dec. 26, “with the exception of the sheriff’s office, which never closes,” the paper said.
With the Christmas holiday many workers got a rare three-day weekend, which created “three days during which time people will be unable to place their money in the banks, file a suit against their neighbor or get a marriage license,” a Dec. 25 news story read.
“Most of the stores in the city will be open Saturday and no dearth of food supplies will be felt,” it added.
On New Years, the Post Office opened windows for one hour, from 9 to 10 a.m., and didn’t make any deliveries because of the holiday, which apparently didn’t create the same concerns about accumulation of mail.
“There will be no money orders, registry of postal savings issued or received,” the paper said. “It is understood that the business houses will be closed as well as the banks and other public institutions.”
UW had small start
A professor from the University of Washington, Frank Kane, visited Vancouver during the holiday week to speak about the difficulty of growing enrollment at the institution.
“Within a year the University of Washington will have reached the full capacity of its buildings and will face the necessity of fixing its enrollment at 3,600 students,” unless more funding was secured for new buildings, he told a crowd at a local high school auditorium. Today, the school has 44,786 students enrolled, but back then it was pushing its limits at 3,500.
This year, 3,264 students are enrolled at Washington State University Vancouver. Tuition at UW in 1914 was also at the lowest per capita rate of any state university in the country, at $185 a year, or about $4,412 in 2014 dollars. Today, UW students pay somewhere around $11,386 per year — more than twice as much.
Beware of aliens with guns
Frank Magistra, an Italian, was arrested by the game warden in Felida that week for hunting without a license, along with a more serious charge of “carrying a gun while an alien.”
Magistra was fined $5.70 ($135.94 in 2014 dollars) and had his gun confiscated.
In 1911 the state passed a law noting that aliens — the foreign kind not the extraterrestrial kind — could not carry a gun unless they had applied for citizenship or acquired a special permit from the state auditor.
Female minimum wage
State Labor Commissioner Edward W. Olson went on a rampage against companies that violated minimum wage laws that winter.
In Walla Walla he found two stores were paying girls less than the minimum wage for their work. He ordered the stores to give the seven girls back pay of $204 ($4,865 in 2014 currency).
“Commissioner Olson says that the department has been lenient in the past with violators of the law because it is a new law and it required time for the employers and the employees of the state to become familiar with the law and the minimum wage regulations established under it,” a story on Dec. 29 said. “Now, however, he says that time enough has elapsed to justify no plea of ignorance, and the law will hereafter be enforced strictly.”
Minimum wage for women in various sectors that year were: $10 a week ($238.49 in 2014) in mercantile establishments; $9 a week ($214.64) for telephone offices and laundries; and $8.90 a week ($212.26) in factories.
A new law in 1915 added a $10 minimum for clerical help in offices; a minimum of not less than $7.50 ($178.87) a week for minors age 16 to 18; and a minimum of $6 ($143.09) for minors under age 16.
Ice on Columbia River
In what must have been a difficult season for those visiting family in Portland over the holidays, frigid temperatures, low water levels and ice stopped almost all freight and ferry service across the Columbia River.
“Only one river boat is now running, that being the Ione, which is keeping up service between this city, Camas and Portland, notwithstanding the ice,” the Vancouver Columbian noted on Christmas Day.
The icy waterways started to clear on Dec. 26, when normal ferry service was able to resume in the afternoon.
“Two weeks of cold weather, the coldest on record for the month of December in this part of the country, came to an end when the gentle patter of rain was welcomed by most everyone yesterday morning,” the story said. “The skating is over, for a while at least. Usually it snows sometime during January, but this year old-timers believe our annual cold spell is over.”
He coulda been a contender
Bud Anderson, Vancouver’s one-time contender for the light-weight boxing championship of the world, had his clock punched over the holiday week in Wallace, Idaho.
Anderson was defeated in the third round of a fight with Frank Barrieu, when Anderson’s trainer, Frank Dupuis, “threw up the sponge early … thereby saving Anderson from a knockout. He was clearly outclassed and that his pugilistic career is over was plainly evident,” a Dec. 26 story said.
Death of pioneers
Two Clark County pioneers died that week.
Laura Riggs Slocum, who was 74, died on Christmas Eve while wintering in California after she fell and broke her hip.
She emigrated with her parents and siblings to Washington in 1852 after a trip along the Oregon Trail from Iowa via ox cart with 150 other families. It took the group seven months and five days to get to Portland.
Riggs Slocum married renowned merchant C.W. Slocum in 1861. The couple built the famed Slocum House, which stands in Esther Short Park.
Ansil S. Marble, builder of the first flour mill on Salmon Creek, died after a prolonged unspecified illness in Vancouver at age 84. He was 22 when he left Illinois to travel the Oregon Trail in 1852. He owned and operated the mill for 30 years, until it burned down in 1885. He was an Indian war veteran, said the Vancouver Columbian story.
