Jim Kershner’s This day in history » On the Web: spokesman.com/topics/local-history

From our archives, 100 years ago

One of the first acts of a new Irish-American club in Spokane was to condemn the “unimaginable and inhuman appearing caricatures of the Irish race” offered by city merchants as St. Patrick’s Day souvenirs.

They were particularly offended by drawings of “freakish little Irishmen in green coats with clay pipes in their mouths” and small pigs and monkeys dressed in green. They said that they understood that some people found these caricatures to be “funny or witty,” but they did not. They said they would prefer to trade with merchants that did not choose “to outrage the feelings of a portion of their customers to please the whims of the others.”

From the manliness beat: Spokane’s civil service commissioner sadly concluded that “city life or the lack of manual exertion has caused a smaller order of men to develop in the city.”

Out of 29 applicants for police patrolmen, 14 were rejected because their chests were too small. The rules required a man to have a chest measurement of 35 inches (for a man standing 5 feet 8 inches tall), up to 42 inches (for a man standing 6 feet 5 inches tall).

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1904: President Theodore Roosevelt appointed a seven-member commission to facilitate completion of the Panama Canal.