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| Year | Stories |
|---|---|
| 1897 | 7 |
| 1898 | 21 |
| 1899 | 1 |
29 stories matching case
- Six Restaurants, One Sacrificial Lamb: Seattle's War on Fake Butter
Six Seattle restaurants caught passing oleomargarine off as butter cut a deal with the dairy commissioner — but not before white proprietors tried to make the Japanese owner of the California take the fall.
- Railroads Raise the Freight on a Crop Already at Rock Bottom
A half-cent-a-pound shipping increase hits Washington hop growers just as overproduction and lice drive prices to their lowest ebb.
- Columbia County Ate Its Last Local Steak
After three years of trainloads shipped out, Dayton's butcher shops ran dry and the town had to import beef from the East.
- The Prize Apple Was Stuffed With Shot
A judge's suspicion at the Spokane fair exposed a prank that briefly put a Wilbur exhibitor's reputation on the line.
- The Wheat Broker Who Vanished With the Proceeds
A Spokane County farmer shipped wheat to a Seattle commission firm and got nothing back. The office was empty, the operator was in San Francisco, and the paper called it deliberate fraud.
- Judge Hanford Draws the Line: Sheep Can't Graze on Railroad Land Without Consent
A federal court ruling in Yakima County upholds the Northern Pacific Railway's right to protect its unenclosed lands from sheep, setting a precedent for property rights and land use in the West.
- The Checkerboard Conflict
A federal judge rules that sheep ranchers can cross Northern Pacific Railway land to reach public grazing grounds, challenging the railroad's control over the landscape.
- Enumclaw Farmers Cut Out the Insurance Companies
Tired of paying premiums to distant corporations, farmers around Enumclaw formed their own mutual fire and lightning insurance company — one neighbor pledging to help another.
- The Yakima Chicken Fancier Who Saw Forty Cents in Every Lost Chick
Leonard Schott turned a North Yakima business sideline into an incubator-fed poultry ranch, sending broilers to Spokane and diagnosing his chicks with everything from rheumatism to appendicitis.
- The Fatal Dance of Washington's Ground Squirrels
Scientists at the state agricultural college tried to wipe out crop-destroying rodents with bacteria—and found a native plague that sent infected squirrels spinning until they dropped.
- Two Hundred Feet of Solid Rock: The Well That Might End Yakima's Water War
For years, the old settlers of the lower Ahtanum and the newcomers up on the bench lands have fought it out in the Yakima courts over who owns the creek. Now four farmers are betting on an artesian well instead — and paying for it out of their own pockets.
- The Wheat Was Ready. The Threshers Weren't.
After several lean years, farmers in the big wheat district around Spokane finally got the crop they had been praying for — and then two weeks of rain and snow arrived before the machines could get to it.
- The Butter Police Come for the Lumber Camp's Oleo
A Seattle dairy commissioner catches a McMurray lumber company serving colored margarine in its boarding house — and the company pleads guilty rather than fight.
- The Dairy That Started With 20 Rented Cows and Ended Up With 2,560 Acres
Two Spokane entrepreneurs built Hazelwood Dairy on a promise that milk would be exactly as advertised—at a time when watered milk was the norm.
- A Filthy Milk Trial, a Lenient Judge, and a Convention's Disgust
The state dairy commissioner lost his Tacoma case against two milkmen whose cows were caked in manure — and the delegates wanted to know what kind of milk the judge kept on his own table.
- The Wholesaler Tells the Growers the Truth: 'We Don't Love You'
Sixteen years in the Seattle commission trade and no patience left, R. Merchant tells a room of fruit growers that no middleman has ever cared about them — and that neat, uniform packing, not grievance, is the only thing that ever got a farmer paid.
- The $100 Cannery: Whatcom Farmers Learn to Preserve Their Own Harvest
A traveling demonstration in Laurel and Nooksack City showed growers how to solder, seal and process fruit—and argued that small local canneries could outlast the timber boom.
- The Orchardist's Revolt: Wawawai Grower Accuses Yakima Commission Firm of Withholding $1,100
J.W. Offield says Thompson Kain refused to pay for his peach and pear crop; the firm counters that he misrepresented varieties and freight rates.
- The Dairy Commissioner’s War on Adulterated Food
A Washington dairy official warns that fake honey, poisoned candy, oleomargarine and brewers’ grain are cheating farmers — and demands stronger pure-food laws.
- A State Veterinarian's 1899 Warning: Fund Animal Disease Control or Pay for It Later
Washington's biennial animal-health report counted diseased horses and cattle, traced a horse meningitis outbreak to mouldy straw in Waterville, and warned lawmakers that tuberculosis could jump between cattle and people.
- The Tumbleweed That Threatened Washington's Wheat
In 1898, a state agricultural professor traced an invasive Russian thistle to railway yards and warned that Yakima County was already infested.
- The Valley That Organized Itself: Nooksack Farmers Build a Co-op and Demand Pure Food
At a December meeting in Deming, farmers from the Upper Nooksack and Sumas Valley formed a permanent association, secured a power separator for 200 cows, and called for a pure food law to stop the adulteration of fruit jams.
- The Water Belongs to the People—Not the Syndicates
A.M. Stevens of Ellensburg warns that handing arid lands to the states is the first step toward private control—and argues the federal government must build the reservoirs.
- They Called the Prairie Worthless. He Planted Wheat Anyway.
A government immigration inspector bought gravelly land south of Tacoma and proved the skeptics wrong — sixteen bushels an acre of No. 1 hard wheat.
- The Debts a Country Owes Its Farmers — and Its Farmers' Wives
An 1898 farm-column editorial tallies what rural Washington neglects: untrained road supervisors, school directors so illiterate the legislature had to bar them, and farm women who never see a newspaper or a neighbor.