100 years ago in Spokane: Arctic explorer Robert E. Peary to give speech at Lewis and Clark High School

Spokane was preparing for the arrival of Rear Admiral Robert E. Peary, the famed arctic explorer.

City dignitaries planned to greet Peary at the train station and take him “on a sight-seeing automobile tour.” A luncheon was planned at the Hall of Doges.

Peary, who at the time was considered to be the first person to have set foot on the North Pole, was in town to give a fund-raising lecture for the Red Cross at Lewis and Clark High School.

From the public safety beat: Deputy Sheriff H.H. Hill was arrested for using undue force in arresting a man during an incident in Wallace, Idaho.

Hill was trying to arrest a miner on an unspecified charge on the street. Witnesses said Hill struck the miner on the head with a heavy revolver while making the arrest.

The arrest attracted a crowd, which became angry at Hill. They surrounded Hill and threatened to throw him into the river.

The county sheriff was summoned and he waded into the crowd and took Hill away. The crowd “applauded” when the sheriff arrested his own deputy.

Hill was charged with using “undue violence in making an arrest” and spent part of the day in jail before being released on bail.

From the immigration beat: A Union Pacific railroad official said that the U.S. should “make immediate arrangements for bringing to this country not less than 500,000 farm laborers from China.”

He offered this as a solution to a serious farm labor shortage throughout the West, because of the large numbers of men entering the armed services.

He said the Chinese laborers should be brought to America upon the “explicit understanding that they are to remain here during the emergency and are to be returned to China after the war.” He said this could easily be accomplished by “a system of records and identification cards.”