Jim Kershner’s This Day in History

From our archives, 100 years ago

A crowd of 500 showed up at the depot to greet the famous “saloon-smasher” Carry A. Nation on her first visit to Spokane.

She did not plan to wield her famous hatchet on Spokane’s saloons – but she didn’t hesitate to attack them with her tongue. As she was walking along the street, she saw the big electric flag sign at Dutch Jake’s, Spokane’s largest saloon, and launched into an impromptu verse:

“Old Glory, Old Glory.

The flag of the free;

How long will King Alcohol

Trample on thee?”

When a man came out of a bar and yelled drunkenly, “Hello, there, Carry!” she said, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. … Don’t you know you’re going to hell?”

“Well, I’ll meet you there,” he said.

“No, you won’t,” she said. “God will see to that. We are not together in this world, and we won’t be together in the next.”

She planned to deliver one of her famous speeches “to men only” later in the week.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1933: Nellie T. Ross became the first female director of the U.S. Mint. … 1979: Conservative Party leader Margaret Thatcher became Great Britain’s first female prime minister.