The Fight Over the Stubblefield Home
Walla Walla's civic leaders spar with the county attorney over the legality of funding a home for orphaned children.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
With all due respect to the opinion of County Attorney Wilson, who holds that the county commissioners have no legal right to appropriate any money to secure the location in Walla Walla of the Stubblefield home, it is noticeable that Mr. Wilson quotes no law and no authority in support of his opinion. The Statesman has at hand an opinion delivered by the supreme court of the state of Kentucky in the case of the Orphan Society of Lexington against Payette county, in which the court holds that the power of the county court to provide for the poor is plenary. The court declared that foundlings and orphans are not fit subjects of poorhouses and that it is to the public interest to maintain, train and educate this class of the poor so as to make them moral and useful citizens.
“Why should we doubt that the county court might organize and maintain an asylum where minor orphans have been so trained as to be respectable, moral and useful men and women, instead of degraded wretches?”
Debates over how tax dollars should be spent on social services—and whether that power is 'plenary'—remain central to local government in Walla Walla today. This 1903 dispute highlights a historic shift from warehousing the poor in poorhouses toward funding institutional care, a struggle that still echoes in modern debates over homelessness and resource allocation.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.