100 years ago in Spokane: Enforcement finds most don’t follow new headlight law

Auto headlight glare was proving to be a serious, and sometimes, fatal hazard on the region’s increasingly crowded roads, the Spokane Daily Chronicle reported.

A new law required that headlight beams must not “strike higher than 42 inches above the ground,” to prevent blinding oncoming drivers. Yet a testing station on Apple Way proved that many autos did not comply.

Of 300 cars stopped at the test station, 150 were violating the headlight law.

Some drivers were simply bending the headlights down so the light stayed low to the road. “This method, although legal, is unsatisfactory in that at high speeds the light is liable to raise.”

The preferred method was to equip the cars with special lenses, which diffused the light downward. Drivers would soon be required to comply.

From the theater beat: John Considine, a former Spokane theater manager, was negotiating to purchase the entire Pantages circuit, one of the West’s major vaudeville circuits, the Chronicle reported.

Considine was the former manager of the old People’s Theater in Spokane. He left to become a partner in the influential vaudeville firm of Sullivan & Considine.

The Pantages management denied that the circuit was for sale, but this did not appear to deter Considine.

“Mr. Considine is quoted (in dispatches from Portland) as saying that in any event he will establish a string of houses from Montana down the Coast,” said the Spokane Daily Chronicle.