Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

Frances King Headlee, assistant state labor commissioner, reported that conditions for working women and girls in Spokane were beginning to improve.

Headlee had arrived two weeks earlier to enforce the state’s labor laws, which had recently been strengthened for working women. She found three laundries and one candy factory that had poor ventilation. The problems were soon rectified. She also looked into other plants and offices employing women and girls, including phone switchboard centers and packing plants, and found various violations of the eight-hour workday.

Enforcement, however, was “hampered by the unwillingness of the girls affected to take the stand as witnesses against their employer.”

From the garden beat: The city’s extensive greenhouses, established at Manito Park two years earlier, had become a popular attraction. Many new flower varieties were on display and were “well worth seeing,” the paper said. The greenhouses were open to the public on Sundays.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicated as emperor of the French and was banished to the island of Elba. … 1945: During World War II, American soldiers liberated the notorious Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany.