Colfax Burglar Foiled by Quick-Thinking Resident
When a stranger confronted Mrs. A. Coolidge in the night, she bypassed the directory to summon help via telephone.
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.
By rare presence of mind, Mrs. A. Coolidge of Spokane, wife of the president of the Traders' National Bank, frustrated one of the boldest robbers who ever attempted to commit a crime in Colfax. The incident occurred about 1 o'clock in the morning. Mrs. Coolidge was alone in the house usually occupied by her brother, C. E. Scriber, cashier of the Second National Bank. Hearing a loud knock, she went to the door and found a man on the porch. The stranger asked if this was the home of Mr. Scriber. Mrs. Coolidge gave a negative answer. The man then stepped inside the door and demanded, "What money you have, and don't make any noise about it." Instead of complying, Mrs. Coolidge ran to the telephone and called Dr. John Benson, who lived three blocks distant. She could not see to look up names in the directory, but remembered his number. Dr. Benson responded, but the robber had fled. As usual about harvest time, the Palouse country is filling up with transient men, and burglars flock in with the laborers. A chain gang system, which Sheriff George organized for the express purpose of working petty offenders, was abolished by order of the county commissioners, and as a result, vagrants flock in, knowing a jail sentence has no terrors for them.
“Instead of complying, Mrs. Coolidge ran to the telephone and called Dr. John Benson, who lived three blocks distant.”
This account captures the tension between labor migration and local security during the harvest season. The abolition of the local 'chain gang' program mirrors modern debates over the efficacy of carceral versus alternative approaches to vagrancy and crime.
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