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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

On the morning after the 1914 election, a prohibition initiative was leading in Spokane County, but a proposal to institute an eight-hour workday was losing.

However, the turnout was exceptionally heavy and many votes had yet to be tallied. Also, the statewide result – the only result that truly counted – was still up in the air.

Prohibition was winning by a vote of 4,677 to 3,098, but the returns from many of the central Spokane precincts, which contained most of the city’s saloons and reliably voted strongly “wet,” had still not been tallied.

The controversial eight-hour workday proposal was being soundly defeated in Spokane County, by a vote of 3,945 to 1,320. Many of the workers that would supposedly benefit from the bill – nurses, for instance – had come out adamantly against it because they felt it would curtail their workweeks and make it harder for them to get their work done.

Elsewhere in the U.S., Republicans showed heavy gains in Congress. Spokane lawyer Clarence C. Dill bucked that trend by becoming the first Democrat to represent a Washington district since 1890.

Also on this date

(From the Associated Press)

1924: President Calvin Coolidge, who’d succeeded the late President Warren G. Harding, was elected to a full term of office.