100 years ago: Editorial boasts how much better Spokane is than New York, Jerusalem, Boston and more

Civic boosterism was the default mode for the Spokane Daily Chronicle’s editorial page, but the editors truly outdid themselves on the city’s 39th “birthday.”

“Comes today a little child, a mere babe among cities, shouting and boasting of a 39th birthday,” said an editorial. “Spokane, the infant – Spokane, which by rights should be creeping, not running; gurgling, not making speeches; playing with rings and rattles, not fighting for a place among business centers of the world. And to those who would scoff at such presumption, Spokane calmly answers by pointing to a population greater than New York gained in almost two centuries; centering highways of commerce finer than Damascus ever knew; farm lands that make those about Jerusalem seem like a desert; mines which all France and all England together cannot equal; schools and colleges which Boston could not have matched on her 200th birthday; and energy, ambition, faith in herself, which Rome in her best days could not surpass. Thirty-nine years gone. A thousand, perhaps 10,000 years to come.”

From the funeral beat: Maj. Gerhard Luhn, veteran of Bull Run, Gettysburg and other Civil War battles, was buried with full military honors at Fairmount Cemetery.

A firing squad fired a volley over the grave, after which taps was sounded.

“His (life) was a model of greatness in every respect and his goodness marks every stage of his life,” said his eulogist, the Rev. James M. Brogan, at the services held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Lourdes.