100 years ago in Spokane: Reverend calls someone who wants total liquor ban “dangerous crank”

From our archive, 100 years ago

Railroad work gangs were nearly finished electrifying the last remaining stretch of the Milwaukee Road route over the Bitterroots.

Crews were installing power in the St. Paul Pass tunnel – familiar to mountain bikers today as the Route of the Hiawatha. Once that work was finished, the final 25-mile stretch of the route to Avery, Idaho, could be operated with electric locomotives. The stretch from Harlowton, Montana, to the East Portal of the tunnel was already electrified.

“Every test has demonstrated the the superiority of the electric motor over the steam engine,” aid the railroad’s president.

From the church beat: The Very Rev. William C. Hicks, dean of All Saint’s Episcopal Cathedral in Spokane, devoted his entire sermon to liquor.

Not particularly about its evils.

“I am not one to condemn every man who takes a glass of liquor as a sinner,” he said. “He may be just as decent, law-abiding and even God-fearing as a man who has never tasted it.”

Instead, he spoke out against efforts in the state to enact a “bone-dry” law, which would make the state’s prohibition law even more restrictive. Dean Hicks said the current law had accomplished its goal by getting rid of the saloon “nuisance.”

But now reformers wanted to go even farther, and ban all liquor everywhere.

“The reformer is an asset, up to a certain point,” said the dean. “After that, he may become a dangerous crank.”