Lyman's History of old Walla Walla County, Vol. 1 / Embracing Walla Walla, Columbia, Garfield and Asotin counties

by William Denison Lyman

WOMAN SUFFRAGE AND PROHIBITION

One of the questions of Walla Webs politics, as of the rest of the state and indeed of the country, was woman suffrage. As the logical evolution of democracy that view of suffrage appealed to the Western man, and the conventional objections had little weight with him. Pressure was brought from all sides upon the legislative delegations to submit the proposition to a popular election—and when that occurred in 1908, it carried in the county and the state by a heavy vote. It has seemed to the voters of both sexes so natural a condition that they can now hardly conceive of any other. The woman suffrage amendment came with a remarkable quietude and almost as a matter of course.

Far more vigorously contested was the question of prohibition. For many years Waitsburg and almost all the farming country had been strongly in favor of prohibition. Waitsburg had under the local option law excluded saloons. But the saloon influences were strong in Walla Walla City, and underground agencies of sundry kinds had maintained a tight grip on municipal politics. At various times somewhat spasmodic waves of moral reform swept over the city, as in the organization of the Municipal League in 1896 and in other similar movements at later times. But in general both city and county politics, as in most parts of the United States, were seemingly dominated by the liquor interests. Yet all through those years there was in progress one of those elemental popular movements going down to the very foundations of society which when finally directed toward a definite end become irresistible. Moral, economic, sanitary, educational, religious, domestic influences, were for a generation moulding the opinions of an army of voters and the combined effect began to be manifest from about 1900 onward to a degree that even the blindest could not fail to see. In 1908, 1910 and 1912, a determined and growing effort by the farmers who had seen the economic loss through laborers and even their own sons going to town and carousing and so losing a day or more every week, started a corresponding movement in town. At first not successful, the campaign kept gaining. Councilmen in the city and commissioners in the county were chosen more and more in the direction of reform. The churches, Young Men's Christian Association, schools, women's organizations, Salvation Army, Good Templars, and especially the Anti-Saloon League, each contributed its push. A city election under the local option law occurred in 1912. The conservative business interests opposed the proposition and even imported distinguished speakers from the East, particularly from the beer center, Milwaukee, and on election day the liquor traffic (styled "Personal Liberty") was still in the saddle. But it was clear that the vote of the city, combined with that of the county, would come back with greater strength in another election, and some of the more far-seeing liquor dealers began arrangements to enter other business. In the great historical election of 1914, the State of Washington secured a definite prohibition law by referendum, though with the "permit" system of personal importation of limited amounts of liquor. Walla Walla County was one of the strong counties in support of the law, being surpassed only by Yakima and Whitman in majority for the measure. It was to a degree an "East Side" victory, for the East Side gave over 25,000 affirmative while the West Side, due to the heavy negative vote of Seattle, gave 10,000 negative. None who was in Walla Walla during the strenuous campaign in October of 1914 will forget the powerful addresses in favor of the law by H. S. Blandford, one of the most eloquent speakers known in this section. His thrilling appeals and incontrovertible arguments brought many voters to the standard of prohibition. His lamented death in 1915 robbed the Walla Walla bar of one of its brightest ornaments.

HOME OF B. P. O. ELKS NO. 287, WALLA WALLA

Old John Barleycorn died hard, and in the election of 1916 the battle was fought over again by a vote on several initiative and referendum measures, as a result of which the "permit" system was replaced by a "bone-dry" law, and the liquor propositions were buried so deep that no resurrection now seems possible. In Walla Walla the gloomy predictions as to unused buildings and ruined business and overwhelming taxation have failed of fulfillment to a degree to make them absurd.

The most prominent questions of local improvement during recent years in Walla Walla County have been the new courthouse and the paving and other improvement of roads. Several elections of commissioners turned upon the first question. There were three propositions ardently advocated from 1910 to 1914. One was to repair the old building, though it had been condemned by experts; another was to make a costly structure at a maximum outlay of $300,000; the third proposal was for a substantial, but plain and modest building, of approximately a cost of $150,000. The latter proposition commended itself to the general judgment, and the commissioners of 1912 and 1914, H. A. Reynolds, E. D. Eldridge, and J. L. Reavis, interpreted their election as a commission to proceed with such a plan. The result has been realized in one of the most fitting and dignified and altogether attractive, though not showy, courthouses in the state, a just pride to the county and an object of admiration to visitors.

Of the road question it may only be said that it is in a formative state. Much money has been wasted in both city and country by ill-constructed pavements, and it can only be hoped that the next decade will see more definite progress than has characterized the experimental stage of the last.

We have given in a preceding chapter the tabulation of county officials to the time of county division in 1875. We now present the legislative delegations and the chief county officials from that date to the present: