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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The U.S. was still years from entering the European war, yet emotions were running ever higher in Spokane.

In the latest example, Spokane’s German community was boycotting Spokane merchant Emil Simon because of Simon’s letter to the editor condemning the speech of Dr. C.J. Hexamer, head of the German-American Alliance.

In the letter, Simon accused Hexamer of being “a hireling of the German government” and stopped just short of calling him disloyal to the U.S.

In a followup letter, Simon said he had learned that Spokane’s German society had been “urgently requested never to buy anything from Simon.”

From the headwear file: Society columnist Betty Graeme said that the urgent men’s fashion question – newfangled straw hats versus traditional wool hats – had been decisively settled by September’s rains.

The first raindrops “pattered down like a benediction (or one should say, malediction) upon the thatched roofs of exposed masculinity, blazing an unmistakable trail across the dusty surfaces of summer straw.”

At one Spokane clothing store, all of the straw hats had been “gathered up and unceremoniously dumped into the waste basket.”