Spokane Falls Denounces the Legislator Who Would Keep the County Whole

SPOKANE FALLS, W.T., Oct. 27, 1883 — The citizens of Spokane Falls have felt deeply outraged by the recent acts of Jacob Stitzel, a resident of Stevens County who was elected on the Republican ticket as joint representative from Stevens and Spokane counties. Stitzel has, without visible cause, set himself up as champion of Cheney and the small section around it in the fight over dividing Spokane County. He is using every job-legislator tactic to defeat the will of the majority. Had he been elected from Cheney, or on the issue of division, no fair-minded man would complain of his position; but he was not. He is a taxpayer in an adjoining county and should stand with the majority of his joint constituency. In the convention that nominated him, F. Montgomery, then editor of the Cheney Sentinel, introduced a resolution demanding that nominees oppose any change in the county boundaries. That resolution was tabled indefinitely by a full vote of the convention—a fact Stitzel knows well, since he accepted the nomination from that body.

The people of the western and eastern parts of Spokane County have been stung by Stitzel's open efforts to block the division they petitioned for. On Tuesday night the feeling culminated in an indignation meeting that filled Cannon's Hall. R. W. Forrest was chosen chairman and J. R. Taylor secretary. L. Ziegler, Esq., explained the object of the meeting in a terse, forceful, and eloquent speech. A committee of ten was appointed to draft resolutions to send to Olympia. The committee retired, returned with a series of resolutions, and the meeting adopted them. They were printed that evening and sent below by the night express.

The resolutions declared that the bill to set off the western portion of Spokane County as a new county was just and ripe; that it was supported by a large majority in both parts of the county and opposed only by a small portion of Cheney and its immediate vicinity; that Spokane County had been unjustly deprived of representation and made a joint constituency with Stevens County; that Jacob Stitzel, a Stevens County resident, was ignorant of the needs of Spokane County and had exceeded his proper duty by acting as "suborned counsel and advocate for the town of Cheney"; and that Stitzel falsely claimed to have been elected on a platform forbidding a disturbance of county lines, though the convention's chairman and secretary had sworn that such a resolution was voted down three to one.

The meeting resolved that L. H. Whitehouse, a resident of the county and member of the Territorial Council, was the proper representative of Spokane County's wishes; that Stitzel had proved himself unworthy of the voters' respect and unfit for the position to which he had been elected; and that the Territorial Legislature should disregard Stitzel and vote for division as a just, proper, and needed measure, without regard to party or locality.