View of downtown Spokane circa 1911.
Though it may be hard to imagine today, Spokane was once a hotbed of labor radicalism. And for a month November of 1909 all eyes of the nation were trained on the city for outlawing speaking in public. Hundreds of men and women who came to the city to challenge the seemingly un-American policy were thrown in jail. Well before 1909, the West had ceased being the land of opportunity advertised in railroad circulars; the fertile farmland and hillsides filled with gold had long since been locked up by big business. The thousands of immigrants, then, were left to working whatever wages were available. Thus the tension between labor and capital a tension as old as the idea of private ownership came out West.