100 years ago today in Spokane: Paper extolls the virtues of scouting and boys being outside

The Spokane Daily Chronicle editorial page posed the question: What is better, a house (indoor) boy or an out-of-doors boy?

Their answer was a “healthy, active out-of-doors boy.”

The paper was extolling the benefits of the scouting movement.

“The true boy scout knows how to act like a little gentleman in the house; but that isn’t the place for his playtime hours,” said an editorial. “He and his troop, led by the scoutmaster, are out in the open, breathing the fresh air, building up muscles, nerves and lungs to make them good for service from now until 1990 at any rate.”

From the irrigation beat: O.L. Waller, professor and secretary of the Columbia Basin Survey Commission, wrote that grazing lands in the Columbia Basin would be worth vastly more money if it were reclaimed and irrigated. The grazing lands were currently selling at $5 per acre. Compare that to some Washington wheat lands, which were selling at $125 to $175 per acre.

His commission was advocating a plan to irrigate vast amounts of grazing land and sagebrush land. It would turn an “uninhabited and worthless desert” into an intensively cultivated “empire.”

From the flu beat: Two Spokane nurses had been planning to spend the rest of the winter in California, enjoying the beaches.

But when the flu epidemic broke out, they abandoned their trip. They were now working 12-hour days at the temporary flu hospital.

The flu epidemic continued to expand in Spokane. School officials were beginning to talk of a possible school closure.