100 years ago today in Spokane: Gold coins, the currency of the West, losing to paper money juggernaut

A Spokesman-Review editorial noted that one of the West’s last distinctive mannerisms — the preference for gold coins over paper money — was about to bite the dust.

For a long time, the paper said, the West’s only important distinction over the “all-powerful East” had been its “addiction to the gold coin.”

“This is a relic of the gold rush days, when gold dust and nuggets were currency and greenbacks were either unknown or utterly despised.”

Consequently, Westerners were never much impressed with large rolls of paper money. While other Western mannerisms died out or were standardized, this one survived.

However, “the treasury department’s announced plan to take the gold piece out of circulation will finish the standardizing job, as far as the West is concerned.”

“East will no longer be East, and West will no longer be West,” said the paper, paraphrasing Kipling.

From the war beat: The Spokane chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution approved a resolution taking a tough line on German provocations on the high seas.

It said that “freedom of travel and trade upon the high seas is implicitly asserted in our Declaration of Independence.”

“We commend the president of the United States for his severance of international relations with Germany on account of her threatened violation of this right.”

The resolution also said that “efficient military preparedness is the best means of maintaining the dignity of the United States government.”