100 years ago in Spokane: Fire Department about to replace its last 5 horses with motorized fire truck

The Spokane Fire Department soon would be without horses, and the savings were big.

Chief A.L. Weeks said the department’s fire budget for maintenance would fall to $12,500 for the year compared to nearly $35,500 in 1911.

“This new motor equipment will do away with the five horses now at No. 6 station and those horses are the last of the 65 horses that were once needed in the fire department,” Weeks said.

Weeks said it cost $175 each year for every horse the department used. Additionally, it cost the department about $750 each year to maintain each wagon.

From the patriotism beat: The Porter Bros., a Spokane contractor, told its employees to salute the flag or take a hike.

The company said some of its workmen got into a “warm argument” several days earlier over the war. Some of the men indulged in language “not entirely flattering to the president.”

The owner heard about it and immediately showed up at the job site “with a remedy.”

He ordered the foreman to make a flagpole and then ran a U.S. flag up it.

Then he told the foreman that anyone who talked disparagingly of the nation be “given the choice of publicly saluting the flag” or collecting their pay and leaving the job.

The “disloyal citizens and aliens” on the job site quickly quieted down and “harmony has prevailed,” said The Spokesman-Review.