The Ministers' Quarrel That Split Colville's Temperance Fight
A local-option campaign turned personal when the Rev. W. A. Diggins claimed all the town's ministers were behind temperance—and the Rev. G. H. Wilbur publicly called that a lie.
Colville, Wash., May 8. — The Rev. W. A. Diggins, of the Christian church, and the Rev. G. H. Wilbur, of the First Congregational church, are not on the best of terms as the result of a disagreement regarding the local option fight now commencing to warm up here, although the prospects are that it will be several months before the question will be settled by an election.
It seems that the Rev. Mr. Diggins made a public statement that he, with all of the other ministers of the town, was in the movement for local option. Mr. Wilbur met Mr. Diggins on the street yesterday and questioned his authority to make such a statement, declaring that he was not invited into the combination.
The lie passed and hot words flew thick and fast, punctuated by expletives bordering on language not intended to dignify the cloth, until a crowd gathered, and the churchmen, noticing the attention they were attracting, moderated their voices and withdrew.
The circumstance has excited considerable comment, and especially are the saloon people interested in what appears, as they believe, to be a radical split in the forces opposed to the liquor traffic.
—Spokesman-Review.
“The lie passed and hot words flew thick and fast, punctuated by expletives bordering on language not intended to dignify the cloth.”
Temperance fights were never just abstract moral debates; they split congregations and turned neighbors into factions. The same pattern persists whenever local alcohol policy, zoning, or ballot measures become a public test of conscience.
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