100 years ago in Spokane: New fire adds to Harrison’s fears of foul play

Harrison, Idaho, had already suffered enough, but a new insult was added to the list.

Someone set fire to the town’s old, abandoned schoolhouse, threatening the few buildings that hadn’t already burned down in a devastating fire a few days before.

Fortunately, quick work by the firefighters – along with a favorable wind direction – saved this schoolhouse fire from spreading to any other buildings.

People in Harrison were still suspicious that the first fire had been started by members of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies), despite some evidence that it had been started by a spark from a switch engine. This second fire added to those suspicions.

“It is thought that the (second) fire was started by dissatisfied men in sympathy with the I.W.W.,” said a Harrison correspondent.

From the war beat: Assistant Secretary of Agriculture Carl Vrooman addressed a crowd of 2,000 at the Spokane Armory and said that the U.S. was already making a difference in the European war.

“We came in with no army to speak of, only a few thousand soldiers, with no military equipment of any sort, a nation entirely on a peace basis,” he said. “And yet, as I have shown, we have made ourselves felt and felt decisively in every line of activity, military, industrial and financial. And there is one other way we have made ourselves felt even more than in any of these other ways, that is, on the moral plane.”