100 years ago in Eastern Washington: A foundry fire threatened the town of Harrington, and Mrs. Poindexter’s latest column lashed out at ‘the bootlegger and the bookmaker’

A massive fire destroyed a harvester plant in Harrington and threatened the rest of the Lincoln County town.

The plant’s main building walls were made of concrete, “and this prevented spread of the flames to the business district.”

A correspondent reported that “more than 300 men, women and children assisted in combating the flames.” They assisted the town’s fire department and helped keep the flames from spreading until reinforcements arrived from the Davenport Fire Department, which raced 18 miles in 40 minutes.

The fire started near the plant’s foundry.

The Harrington Manufacturing Co. had been established about 13 years earlier, making combine harvesters and parts for other farm implements. Business had been prospering, and the manager vowed to rebuild.

From the gambling beat: Elizabeth Gale Poindexter, wife of the former U.S. Senator from Spokane, took aim at a widespread Washington DC vice in her syndicated column: gambling.

She claimed that no city in America spent more time and energy on horse racing and other forms of gambling.

“It seems nowadays that there can not be a sport of any kind without gambling,” she wrote. “People cannot sit down to a social game of cards without wanting to take all the coin from their opponents’ pockets. Men do not care so much for baseball as they did; they get a vicarious satisfaction in making pools on the number of runs a team will score during a week.”

She concluded by saying that “the bootlegger and the bookmaker are doing as much as anyone to to break down the old-time standards of Americanism, and they ought both to be put out of business.”