They were terrorists, for sure, but newspaper writers didn’t call them by that name back then. They called them a mob, and on April 29, 1899, the mob snapped. One thousand striking union men stole a train, rode it into Wardner, Idaho, and dynamited the Bunker Hill mill into “a million pieces.” They shot and killed one man and wounded two others. The newspaper headlines the next day screamed the news in black and white, while a smaller subhead whispered: “Town is Temporarily Ruined.”

The potential for terrorist activity this summer – a potential Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has a gut feeling about – feels so 21st-century. Yet read the front page of the 19th-century Spokesman-Review and it will help you remember that unimaginable acts of violence happened in the “good old days,” too.

The Spokesman-Review is celebrating 125 years of existence. As part of the commemoration, a historical front page is running inside the modern news pages each Wednesday for one year. And on Sundays, the newspaper is republishing the political cartoons of William C. Morris, who became the first political cartoonist in the Inland Northwest when hired by The Spokesman-Review in 1904.

Shaun Higgins, history buff and director of sales and marketing for The Spokesman-Review, chose the historical front pages with certain themes in mind.

“I thought it would be interesting to look for pages containing stories that dealt with long-term concerns of our region, the issues that have been dominating conversations and shaping local politics and the economy for as long as there’s been a city of Spokane,” Higgins said. “As a consequence, readers will find pages announcing the launching of economic-development programs (there have been many), along with environmental stories, culture-related headlines and tourism.”

There is a tendency in the news business, and in human nature, to believe that the reality we’re living is unprecedented in its seriousness. The issues have never been so complex. The solutions so elusive. These commemorative front pages, resurrected from earlier eras, provide a useful perspective. Some problems never really go away. The players and the facts change, but the underlying tensions remain constant. Or society debates an issue for decades before any real change comes about.

As gay and lesbian citizens strive for equal rights in 2007, you can read in the April 30, 1899, newspaper about a Mrs. George who plans to lecture on women’s rights. She says, “I believe women ought to vote, and that a jury ought to be half women. I think a woman has just as much right to make something out of herself as a man.” The headline informs readers that Mrs. George is “in great demand as freak.”

The historical journalism reminds us how little control individuals have over the public events that intersect with their private lives. Men and women have power only over their reactions to the news of the day. Some ignore it. Others use bad news to fuel personal cynicism and violence. Others step out on that public stage and try to change things for the better.

There are gifts from history hiding beneath the headlines and in the political cartoons from these newspapers. Treat