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

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane businessmen initiated a drive that sounds familiar to modern ears: Buy local and eat local. The Buying-at-Home League held a grand banquet at the Hotel Spokane in which everything from “cocktails to cigars to confections” was made in Spokane territory.

Their point was simple: “Housewives who thoughtlessly buy shipped-in products to eat, wear and use” could just as easily buy products made in Spokane.

N.W. Durham and Mayor Hindley gave speeches with “unimpeachable facts and figures” proving that Spokane consumers were sending millions of dollars out of the local economy.

The banquet’s turkey came from a Spokane poultry farm, the apple pie from Waverly orchards and the soup from Opportunity tomato farms. And yes, Spokane did indeed have its own cigar factories, even if the tobacco leaves were not exactly local.

From the nudity beat: The editor of the Home Colony Agitator, the newsletter of a Tacoma-area free-thinkers commune, was on trial for abusing the rights of the free press with an article about the colony’s practice of “bathing in the sunlight without other adornment.”

The title of the offending article? “The Nudes and the Prudes.”

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1972: East Pakistan changed its name to Bangladesh.