100 years ago today in Spokane: Ticket scalpers draw mayor’s ire regarding president’s upcoming visit

Mayor C.M. Fassett issued a personal warning against ticket scalping for the upcoming visit by President Woodrow Wilson to Spokane.

The ticket cards, he said, will be “closely scrutinized by doorkeepers, and unless addressed to the proper persons, the holder will not be admitted,” said the mayor.

“Anyone who purchases a ticket issued to another will run the risk of losing the purchase price,” said the mayor.

Ticket scalpers were apparently selling both genuine and bogus tickets. Wilson was scheduled to arrive in Spokane on Sept. 12 and speak at the Spokane Armory in support of his League of Nations proposal.

From the League beat: Meanwhile, a score of Spokane business and professional men voted to form a local branch of an organization adamantly opposed to the League of Nations.

They called themselves the League for the Preservation of American Independence. They believed that the League of Nations was “one of the most momentous issues” ever presented to American citizens – and that it was a bad idea.

From the goat beat: The city probation officer was accustomed to dealing with miscreants, but now he was dealing with a different kind: goats.

Residents in several parts of the city were complaining about noise from their neighbors’ milch goats.

“These goats have me going,” the officer confessed. “I don’t know what I am going to do. I can find no law to prevent keeping goats in the city, and I can’t make the goats keep quiet.”