100 years ago in Spokane: Restaurant workers no longer forced to work 7-days-a-week

Cafe workers in Spokane won a major labor concession: a six-day week.

Cooks and bakers were finally going to be allowed one day off per week, in an agreement reached with cafe employers.

“The employers realize that the cooks and bakers are entitled to special consideration in view of the trying and exhaustive character of their work, and believe that the contemplated change will result in increased efficiency and contentment,” said a representative of the restaurant owners.

The employers did warn the public that this might result in increased costs and prices, since the cafe business is “essentially a seven-day business.”

The other cafe workers – the wait staff and dishwashing staff – were not mentioned.

Nearly 40 restaurants agreed to the six-day work week a few weeks earlier, but three downtown cafes had refused the demand and workers in those restaurants had gone on strike.

From the regatta beat: Returned war hero Lt. William Hamer was scheduled to defend his Coeur d’Alene canoe championship at the upcoming Coeur d’Alene Regatta. Hamer won the competition two years earlier.

In the interim, he went to war and was “shot down in a thrilling air battle on the Western Front.” He was originally reported killed in action, but he survived and spent several months recovering in a hospital.

The Spokane Daily Chronicle ran a front-page photo of Hamer back in his canoe.

From the lewdness beat: Harry M. Wicks and his secretary Mrs. Erma Lee Lamb were not yet in the clear after their “lewdness” conviction was reversed on the grounds that the city’s lewdness ordinance was too vague.

Now prosecutors filed a new charge under a different provision of the ordinance.

Wicks, a well-known “bolshevist” firebrand, and Mrs. Lamb were arrested months earlier while sharing a Spokane hotel room.

From the speed beat: Deputy Sheriff Clarence Gorham, the “county speed cop,” was arrested and fined $15 for speeding through Hillyard.

Gorham said he was pursuing a car thief when he was speeding. But Hillyard’s city prosecutor said Gorham did not have the right to speed, even if he was in pursuit of a fugitive.

From the marriage beat: Lucy Huetter, a Sacred Heart Hospital graduate who served as a nurse during World War I, married a patient she cared for in France.

Huetter met Lt. E.J. Harbeck at a camp hospital. He later returned to duty. They married in Buffalo, New York.