100 years ago in Spokane: Seattle mayor takes his leisure at the Davenport

Ole Hanson, Seattle’s newly elected mayor, was in Spokane to rest up after a bruising mayoral campaign.

Why Spokane?

“Because the Davenport Hotel is the best place to rest that I know of,” said the colorful mayor-elect, with a big cigar clamped between his teeth.

Hanson was elected on a platform calling for a unified, loyal Seattle, “a Seattle free from treason and sedition.” This meant “a Seattle free from I.W.W. (Wobbly) control.”

He said he campaigned in a labor hall “packed with ‘reds’ and I shook my fist in their faces and defied them.

“I told them I stood for construction, not destruction.”

He boasted that he won “in the most radical city in the West.” He vowed to turn Seattle into a city of 1 million people within 10 years and turn Washington into “one of the greatest states in the union.”

From the divorce beat: A Plaza merchant sued his wife for divorce because of how she behaved when he went “under the knife.”

When informed that he was on the operating table, she chose not to come to the hospital. Instead, she chose to “dance and make merry” at a party, with “apparent unconcern.”