The Newspaper War Between Spokane Falls and Cheney

For some time the Review has passed by unnoticed the petty and persistent slurs launched at Spokane Falls and its citizens by the papers at Cheney. Like a cur dog emboldened by the contemptuous disdain and non-aggressive attitude of a passer-by, these delectable sheets, pandering to a cankerous jealousy that a certain class of stagnated and narrow-minded denizens of that almost deserted village feed upon, grind out this nauseating rot. The fact that Spokane Falls is growing and the news thereof draws more attention to Cheney than if it were a penitential tater-house galls the local asthmatic barrel organs, and as they gnash their teeth in impotent rage, they take advantage of the only resource and try to cool their heated malice in the sewer of vituperation and falsehood.

Cheney is located on the Northern Pacific road, much to the detriment of the natural scenery along that route, as it is a phantasmagorian blot on the otherwise attractive landscape, with buildings reduced to jaw bone. It is surrounded with an air of profound laziness and disease-producing ponds in summer, and in spring and damp weather with a clammy, adhering, bottomless ocean of mud. By one of those peculiar dispensations of counting-in boards, from which the election manipulators of the sunny south might learn a trick or two, in an evil hour Cheney became the county seat of Spokane county, a fact that from the appearance of the place has brought odium upon the otherwise fair county, and innumerable aches to the cheeks of those who are compelled to guide strangers into the place. It has a population of probably near one thousand, and the only reason that the number remains at those figures is that the people cannot get away.

There is one brick building in the city, lonely and companionless. We may thank a city for through a leniency in the last Legislature, that would have granted Spokane the same honor had the people asked the favor, a bill was passed incorporating the town as a city, a word that ought to imply something, but in this case signifies absolutely nothing. As we said the city boasts loudly of one brick, owned by a deceased good fellow, who, no doubt, most devoutly wishes that it was anywhere else than where it is. The county buildings are perched on the hill and overlook a straggling conglomeration of tumble-down one-story frame buildings, bristling with stove pipes, saddened with age, and a multifarious collection of old clothes bulging out from broken windows like ugly warts. The public edifices could be bowed down to and worshipped, as they are like nothing in the heavens above, the earth beneath, or the waters under the earth. They are rambling, crazy structures, poorly built and apparently trying to hide themselves from view in the least auspicious surroundings. On the interior they are as uninviting and dilapidated as the exterior promises, the benches and flooring elegantly tessellated with nicotine, the various tints indicating the indented taste of the artists, running from the old black negro plug to the lightest of Virginia plug.

A stranger would not seek quarters as provided, when a gentleman who presents himself shall be enrolled as a guest at the hotel, only to be deserted to the doubtful hospitality of anything claiming to be first class to exist in that place. The empty rooms echo to the stealthy tread of the inquisitive rat, and the rays of the pale moon creep through wrinkled windows tracing spectre shadows on bare walls and uncarpeted floors. The time will come when the odors of the culinary department will again filter through the corridors, but it would be a quicker means of self-destruction if two men possessing the temerity to embark in such an enterprise would tie the brain of one of the Cheney editors about his neck and cost him to the rushes and ooze, poetically ycleped a lake, that covers the town with miasma and strong-smelling streets, one of which is paved irregularly, or was some time ago, with heaps of stone, making the highway almost impassable, while the back avenues are macadamized with manure piles and empty tin cans.

Cheney also has real estate, and the owners are perfectly willing to keep it, because they cannot give it away. One of the good men of Cheney — don't be startled, gentle reader, for notwithstanding the apparent absurdity of the statement there are a number of good men and fair gentlemen at the county seat — informs us that real estate is not worth 40 cents on the dollar. We believe this, coming from so unimpeachable a source. The man who buildeth his wealth on lots in Cheney is the poorest man in Washington Territory. Although the papers are constantly harping on an advance in real estate, the facts remain just the same.

The above is Cheney as it is; it takes no prophetic vision to depict the place a decade hence. We do not write with malice; on the contrary it is with the deepest sympathy we look upon the town dragging out a miserable existence. The papers have forced us in giving publicity to their metropolis. In gratitude for once and decency we should never have hurt their feelings by alluding to the town as it really exists if in all their newspaper work they should have shown one spark of kindness. This sketch is hasty and incomplete. If it is necessary to go into further particulars we have the data to work upon, and only say something the next time that can be construed into buncombe.