This day in history: Trade with China and dancing on Sundays

From 1975: Trade with China was still in its infancy when Spokane importer Robert A. Dewey visited the Canton Trade Fair.

Dewey reported that all of China’s import and export business was siphoned through the four-day, twice-yearly fair. He said that all of China’s exports had three prices.

“The lowest price is for old friends,” he said. “Next is the price for new friends, like the Americans. And there is an awfully high price for those regarded as unfriendly. The latter are traders who have defaulted on their payments.”

He visited a Canton department store and reported that “they are 100 years behind us in retailing.”

“There was nothing there an American would want to buy,” he said.

The food, however, was “fantastic.”

From 1925: A culture war was raging over this question: Should dancing be allowed on Sundays?

Spokane County officials were mulling a petition to allow the dance pavilions at Liberty Lake and Newman Lake to be open on Sundays.

The petition was backed by the Spokane Betterment Society, but vociferously opposed by the Spokane Ministerial Association and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The county commissioners had not announced a decision.

Meanwhile, prosecuting attorneys in Coeur d’Alene quashed any notion that dances would be allowed there on Sundays. Sunday dancing had been banned for four years in Idaho.

In Stevens County, dance hall proprietors were pushing for Sunday dances, but the county prosecutor said the county commissioners had banned Sunday dances the previous fall.