This day in history: Lumber workers furious over reports of needless cedar burning by Forest Service. Master safecracker makes bail, heads to Calif. before trial

From 1976: Lumbermen in the Inland Northwest were livid over reports that the Forest Service was deliberately and needlessly burning usable cedar.

“One Spokane cedar products operator said he and his family had to go on welfare and food stamps this winter because he couldn’t buy enough cedar trees to keep his mill open,” the Spokane Chronicle wrote.

Other operators provided “specific times and locations where such timber had been torched instead of sold.”

Forest Service officials insisted that the burned timber was “worthless waste” and decried the Chronicle’s stories as “sensationalism.”

Lumber operators were appealing to U.S. Rep. Tom Foley.

From 1926: Isadore (Izzy) Edelstein, convicted master safecracker, was released on $30,000 bond and was soon to be headed to Los Angeles.

“Every step of his release under bond was bitterly contested by Prosecutor Charles Leavey,” the Chronicle wrote.

Leavey pointed out that Edelstein had been convicted of stealing $22,000 in the sensational Paulsen Building heist, and that Edelstein might be using his ill-gotten gains to pay for bail.

Leavey also said he believed that “Edelstein will never appear in Spokane again after he is given liberty to leave the state.” Edelstein’s attorneys assured the court that Edelstein would return for his trial as a “habitual criminal” in April.

Also on this day

(From onthisday.com)

1945: U.S. Marines raise the United States flag atop Mount Suribachi in Iwo Jima. A photo taken by Joe Rosenthal inspires the Marine Corps War Memorial sculpture.