This day in history: Vice President Charles Dawes spoke vigorously to Spokane crowd. Environmentalists criticized smokestack ‘solution’

From 1975: Local environmentalists were unimpressed by the Bunker Hill Co.’s assertion that its tall smokestacks were an “antipollution measure.”

“Tall stacks simply are not a solution to pollution emissions problems.” said the chairman of the local Sierra Club chapter. “All the stacks succeed in doing is spreading the same amount of pollution over a wider area.”

He urged federal officials to reject the idea for the lead and zinc smelter.

The smokestack concept had already “met with a cool response” from Idaho state officials. Federal Environmental Protection Agency officials had not yet ruled on the issue.

From 1925: Vice President Charles G. Dawes swept into Spokane by train and railed against what he considered to be outmoded U.S. Senate rules, in which “one man, or a minority,” can hold up necessary legislation.

This issue of arcane Senate rules did not, at first, seem to connect with the crowd of about 300, gathered around the Union Station platform.

But the “faint applause” grew into “almost thunderous applause” as Dawes made his case. Dawes urged everyone to write their senators “and tell them what you think.”

Dawes was headed to the coast on the westbound Olympian train to continue his campaign against the rules.

The vice president, who had become well-known for smoking an unusual pipe that some started calling a “Dawes pipe,” never let go of it while he was addressing the crowd, according to the Spokane Daily Chronicle.