100 years ago in Spokane: Anti-Saloon League declares Prohibition a success in Spokane

L.R. Horton, district superintendent for the Anti-Saloon League, declared that drunks and bootleggers were “on the run” in Spokane.

“Last holiday season, drunken men were plentiful, but it’s different this year,” he claimed.

And what did he base that on?

“I have looked around the streets, saloons and pool halls, but I haven’t found many drunks,” he said.

Perhaps he needed to look a little harder. Prohibition enforcement agents had more work than ever. They were raiding stills and catching bootleggers every day. The police court was jammed with public drunkenness cases.

And as for private drunkenness? Who knows how pervasive that was?

Horton may have been indulging in a bit of wishful thinking. The Anti-Saloon League had been one of the leading proponents of Prohibition, and it no doubt wanted to portray it as a rousing success. Even Horton, however, admitted there were still a few pockets of Prohibition resistance.

“I expect to spend considerable time in Ferry County, where considerable booze sifts through, and where, I understand, there is some difficulty in law enforcement,” he said. “I have not yet found a place where the law could not be enforced.”

The league was pushing for jail sentences instead of fines for those caught.

“A jail sentence cures most of the bootleggers,” he said.

Also on this day

(From the Associated Press)

1940: During World War II, Germany dropped incendiary bombs on London, setting off what came to be known as “The Second Great Fire of London.”