A Friday Harbor Citizen Tells a Rival Editor to Pack His Bags and Go
When the San Juan Graphic blamed saloons for driving settlers to Orcas Island, a letter-writer fired back: if the moral air is so pure over there, why not start your paper there—we'll see you off with a band.
Friday Harbor, March 6, 1891.
Mr. Editor—The last edition of the San Juan Graphic contains an editorial headed "Why is it so?" In it the editor of that enterprising(?) sheet states that people are flocking to East Sound and Orcas Island and giving San Juan the go-by, because of the evil influence emanating—which word, by the way, is not correctly spelt—from saloons. It also says that on the same account the more intelligent classes will not settle here.
I would like to ask Mr. Baum, who presumably, from the tone of the article, considers himself one of the intelligent class referred to, whether the notably educated and cultivated people—who are presumably also intelligent—of the great civilized centres, such as Paris, London or New York, are particularly distinguished by such strict temperance principles as he would have us believe actuate the people flocking past San Juan to East Sound and Orcas. I do not think he shows any of the intelligence he hints he is possessed of when he takes this position.
And again, if Mr. Baum is so fond of the purity of the moral atmosphere which he says prevails in that "neck of woods," why on earth don't he go over there and start a truly moral newspaper. It would surely thrive in that air. He need not be afraid of offending his friends in Friday Harbor by leaving, either. We would get a band and see him off on the steamer, his departure heralded by the inspiring strains of "In the sweet by and bye," or something similar.
Respectfully, A Citizen of Friday Harbor who don't want to move.
“We would get a band and see him off on the steamer, his departure heralded by the inspiring strains of "In the sweet by and bye," or something similar.”
The 1891 spat between the Islander and the San Juan Graphic is an early round in a very Washington argument: whether a town's saloons and nightlife drive away the 'better class' of settler or are simply part of a free community. Substitute any modern land-use or 'quality of life' fight and the rhetoric is nearly unchanged.
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