Three Tickets and a Saloon Fight in Spokane
A municipal campaign pits Populists, Republicans and the A.P.A. against one another over liquor licenses, Eugene V. Debs and religious intolerance.
In the Spokane municipal campaign there are three tickets in the field. The Populist ticket is headed by Mayor Belt. John Cornelius is manager of the canvass. That ticket favors the licensing of horrible dives where painted and half-clad women in curtained boxes sell liquor to young men. The Republican ticket is headed by C. R. Hopkins. The platform denounces Eugene V. Debs and religious intolerance. The clergy are working for this ticket. The A. P. A., or Patrick Henry Winston ticket, is headed by Walter France. It is in the field to defeat the Republicans if possible. There are no Democrats in Spokane except a few government officials, hence there is no Democratic ticket.
“The platform denounces Eugene V. Debs and religious intolerance.”
Spokane’s 1895 campaign shows municipal politics split by liquor licensing, religious prejudice and third-party insurgency—fault lines that still surface in city elections. The A.P.A.’s anti-Catholic nativism and the fight over vice districts are reminders that “morality” issues have long been used to draw political lines. The absence of a Democratic ticket also reminds us how quickly local party systems can be reshaped.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.