On this day 100 years ago in Spokane: Baby Buster left on the doorstep of the Brown family

Mr. and Mrs. C.B. Brown were awakened at night by the “violent ringing of the doorbell.”

Mrs. Brown ran to the door, but saw nothing except a big pasteboard box.

“Fearing it might be a bomb, she called her husband to investigate,” said the paper. “They found a baby boy, wrapped up in a clean little pink blanket.”

An attached note said, “Please take good care of me. My birthday was June 20. Buster.”

The box also contained a bottle of milk and a package of baby food.

Mrs. Brown telephoned all of the neighbors, as well as the police and a doctor. The doctor arrived and reported that Buster weighed 10 pounds and was perfectly healthy. He was crying for milk, but “a half dozen neighbors were excitedly preparing” bottles in the kitchen.

Mrs. Brown said she was willing to keep him. Mr. Brown, railway mail clerk, said, “it’s all right with me, if the boy is healthy, I guess.”

From the Wobbly beat: The Idaho state defense council reported that the Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World, or IWW) had instituted a “reign of terror” in northern Idaho.

The Wobblies strikes were making it impossible for the region to supply the lumber “necessary to carry on” the nation’s war program, said the council.

The council recommended that 2,000 federal troops be sent in to combat the Wobbly strikes.

The local sheriffs had “assured us repeatedly that the situation had passed beyond their control.”