Spokane’s change to at-large, non-partisan elections in 1910 had the effect of routing all of Spokane’s politics through the offices of the Spokesman-Review.
By William Stimson
One of the hardest things to recall about life in Spokane in the first half of the 20th century is that it was a world without much media – no Internet, no TV, radio was inconsequential as a source of local information, movies were still an evening out.
Into this media void plopped, every morning of the year on nearly every porch in town, the Spokesman-Review, a very readable 12 to 80 pages of national and international news no one had yet heard, opinion and photo features, fiction, philosophy, gossip and gore, cartoon strips, “Dorothy Dean’s” recipes, prize-winning cartoonists yipping at the ankles of Cowles’ opponents. In a relatively quiet era, the Review was a booming voice that set the tone and agenda for Spokane.
While many cities of the era had newspapers with strong opinions, two factors made the Review 
especially influential. First, its opinion went virtually unanswered. The only other independent newspaper (excluding the afternoon Chronicle, which also belonged to Cowles), was the Spokane Press. Always much smaller, it was feeble in the 1930s, finally closing in 1939.
The other factor was Spokane’s political system. A classic study of local politics, City Politics by Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson (1963), pointed out that “newspapers play a particularly important part in the electoral processes of nonpartisan cities, especially those so large that candidates cannot become known to the electorate through direct personal contacts.” Spokane fit that category exactly. Spokane’s change to at-large, non-partisan elections in 1910 had the effect of routing all of Spokane’s politics through the offices of the Spokesman-Review. A candidate simply had no other way to communicate with an electorate of 100,000 people.
This did not mean the Review could dictate to candidates. But the Review did choose what questions candidates would answer, and how their answers would be portrayed. A candidate had to give some attention to how the Review felt about issues.
The same was true after the election. Elected officials did not always go along with the Spokesman-Review’s view, and the Spokesman-Review did not generally disagree. But when the two were not in alignment, it was sure to be a hard struggle for public officials.
In 1935 the Spokesman-Review neglected to report why city officials favored sewage treatment.
A case in point is the protracted battle over construction of a sewage treatment plant. The Spokane River was being used as an open sewer, with aesthetic and potential health consequences. In 1933 the Spokane city commissioners proposed to build a sewage treatment plant. The Review declared against it and the citizens rejected the bond issue.
In 1935 the commissioners tried again, proposing to use money offered by the federal Works Progress Administration to build the plant. The Review’s news stories about this plan were virtually editorials against it. The first report, carried on page one, column one, was headlined, “Sewage Scheme Rouses Alarm.” Decked headlines read: “Plan Voters Rejected Would Mean Big Cost Yearly,” and “No Health Aid.” The story began, “The WPA’s proposed sewage disposal plant gift to the city is one gift horse that is being looked at in the mouth by residents.” The remainder of the story quoted a former commissioner, then deceased, who had been against sewer systems. Current officials were not interviewed about why they were for the plan. Much of the information was incorrect. The story said, “The state board of health has investigated pollution of the Spokane River and has found that it is not sufficient to be a nuisance.” In fact, that very year the state director of health’s annual report said several of the state’s rivers were polluted and needed cleaning, but only the Spokane River was listed as “grossly polluted.” The WPA proposal went down to defeat.
The commissioners brought the sewage treatment plant up again in 1938, and it was defeated again. In 1940 they proposed yet another plan. The Review’s stories on the proposal a week before the vote in March 1940 were headlined ” ‘Sewer-Water’ Trick Exposed” and “Disposal Plant Scheme Shown.” Both stories were cast in a question-and-answer format that gave the reader the proper answers in the manner of a catechism:
“Question – In what respect does the sewage disposal issue coming before the voters March 12 differ from the manner in which it was presented at three former elections?
“Answer – In the other elections the voter was informed as to what was before him, while in the coming election the purpose was at first carefully concealed in the guise of a shift of $30,000 of sewer funds to furnish work for the WPA . . . .
“Question – Is the city council majority that passed the water-sewer merger ordinance last November still trying to conceal its real purpose?
“Answer – The real purpose has now become so apparent that further effort at concealment has been dropped and the city commissioners are talking sewage disposal . . . .
“Question – What has become of the preemptory order of the state board of health?
“Answer – It is buried in the files of the city clerk’s office. No one seems to regard it with any degree of seriousness, except the city commissioners pushing the water-sewer merger . . . .
“Question – To defeat the proposed grab of water funds, what is required of the voter?
“Answer – That he go to the polls next Tuesday and vote “no” in the space on the ballot which asks if the cost of operation of sewers be paid for by the water division.”
Thus the sewage treatment plant lost a fourth time.
A case in point is the protracted battle over construction of a sewage treatment plant. The Spokane River was being used as an open sewer, with aesthetic and potential health consequences. In 1933 the Spokane city commissioners proposed to build a sewage treatment plant. The Review declared against it and the citizens rejected the bond issue.
William Cowles’s influence in Spokane went beyond his dominance of the public discourse. As the official history of his company, The Spokesman-Review: News for an Empire, by Ralph Dyar, explained: “A characteristic feature of the Spokesman-Review’s campaigns was that they were not confined to the columns of the paper. They might include conferences; a war chest; mobilization of public-spirited citizens; speeches before organizations; the appointment of some one person to take charge of a certain campaign; the preparation, printing, and distribution of pamphlets and circula rs; the financing of a delegation to go to Washington, D.C., to bring pressure to bear on the lawmakers in the interest of the community; and other missionary work.”
There is no mystery at all about why William Cowles became a controversial figure. Anyone who weighs into important public questions will make enemies. Anyone who does so day in and day out for half a century (Cowles died in 1946) in one small community would have an opportunity to offend everyone sooner or later.
The real mystery is how the Cowles family managed to retain so much respect despite taking sides on so many issues. Few politicians could have done it.
Carl H. Trunk, a lifelong Spokane businessman who witnessed Spokane politics through the first half of the 20th century, said of Cowles: “He had more friends and enemies than any man I know.” Trunk counted himself among the friends because of Cowles’ many charities. “His love for children was more than a gesture. With his personal money he purchased 300 acres of land at Diamond Lake, which is now called “Camp Cowles,” and made it possible for hundreds of boys to have their vacations at this beautiful camp site.” As a publisher, said Trunk, ” he did more to build a clean, decent city than any other man.”
Orville C. Pratt, a superintendent of Spokane’s schools in the 1920s and 1930s, wrote in a manuscript history of Spokane: “In all probability no other citizen of Spokane has had as much influence in determining the sort of city [Spokane] has become. Personally, Cowles was modest, self-effacing, quiet, upright, likable and inflexible . . . . It is open to question whether any one man should be in a position to wield such great influence, although with Cowles it was in safe, though conservative hands.”
This carefully measured statement reflects the typical ambivalence of Spokanites toward the first William Cowles. No one would have answered the supposed “open question” of whether one man’s influence should be so great in the affirmative.
Yet people who knew Cowles well did not vilify him. They always noted his redeeming qualities. His dedication to the Boy Scouts, the youth movement of that era, was genuine. He gave a great deal to the community, including a building to the Chamber of Commerce, a library to Whitworth College, many tracts of land to the city for the parks system. He hired friends who needed work. He was a timely investor in the Davenport Hotel and dozens of other struggling businesses. A person with power is in a position to do good as well as evil. The president of Washington State College wrote to William Cowles, Jr., in 1946: “On two or three occasions when the functions and freedom of the State College of Washington were in jeopardy I turned to your father for help. At once he responded and saved this institution from serious harm.”
When Orville Pratt added Cowles’ influence was “conservative,” he meant that any proposal that lowered moral standards or raised taxes was sure to come under withering scrutiny at the Spokesman-Review. This is ironic in retrospect, since the Spokesman-Review of the 1990s took to excoriating those who similarly opposed grand public projects as “naysayers.” The old Review’s constant advice, as with the sewer “scheme,” to “look a gift horse in the mouth,” may have been a source of Spokane’s notorious reluctance to fund big public projects.
Whatever its origin, that resistance to public expenditures became a factor in Spokane’s next political era. When community leaders, including the Spokesman-Review, decided Spokane needed serious injections of public investment, the community resisted. To get around the public’s resistence, Spokane’s leaders designed an effective but also risky system of insider politics.
