100 years ago in Spokane: Prohibition dramatically reduced public drunkenness

From our archives, 100 years ago

Spokane prohibition advocates cited some impressive numbers to prove that statewide prohibition was working.

In the first five months of prohibition, there were only 210 arrests in Spokane for public drunkenness, compared with 642 in the same period a year before. There were only 116 arrests for disorderly conduct, compared with 305 the year before. And there were only 168 arrests for vagrancy, compared with 583 the year before.

On the other hand, there were 10 arrests for bootlegging, but in general, the paper said the city was a far more peaceable place than it had been under the “wet regime.”

From the reservation beat: Government authorities told the Spokane Chamber of Commerce there was good reason to believe that “three-fourths of the land on the south half of the (Colville) Reservation now allotted to Indians will eventually be farmed under lease by white settlers.”

“Since by far the greater part of attractive farming land on the reservation has been allotted to its aboriginal inhabitants, and since the government Indian office does all it can to encourage leasing, this statement has nothing remarkable about it,“ said the paper.

In a few months, the reservation would be “thrown open” to homestead entry – except the areas that had already been allotted to tribal members. What was left over was not, in general, good farm land. Officials predicted “that no extensive farming will ever be done” on the tracts about to be thrown open for white settlement.

However, “government agents do not discourage the entry of white men” in the “capacity of leasers of Indian land … on the contrary, they encourage negotiations of this sort in every way they can.”