On August 21, 1910, a newspaper in Missoula, Montana, announced that 300 refugees would be arriving, “probably at 7 o’ clock this morning,” on a train originating from Wallace, Idaho.Footnote ¹ Riding on that train, in a coal car, Mr. and Mrs. O. W. Bass came to Missoula covered in black dust but thankful to have escaped any harm from the massive forest fire burning in the surrounding area.Footnote ² Residents first greeted the Basses and other passengers with “sandwiches and coffee spread out in the railroad station park” before arranging overnight lodging and meals.Footnote ³ Missoula was not, however, the only community to receive a sudden influx of displaced people. “Thousands of settlers have been left homeless and refugees are constantly arriving in towns,” stated a telegram sent to Idaho’s governor.Footnote ⁴ For the next several days, approximately 1,200 people arrived in both Missoula and Spokane, Washington, and another 1,600 to 2,100 refugees fled to other nearby towns. An immense, fast-moving wildfire in the border region comprising eastern Washington, northern Idaho, and western Montana—an area collectively known as the Inland Empire—quickly drove these residents from their homes to seek safety, shelter, food, and clothing.Footnote ⁵

While the fire in August 1910 was no doubt unprecedented, the practice of caring for refugees was not particularly unique. In fact, providing for those fleeing from catastrophic events was a familiar experience for many turn-of-the-century communities throughout the nation and within the Inland Empire. Fires and floods, along with a number of other natural and manmade disasters—earthquakes, storms, wars, and labor conflicts—repeatedly drove people from their homes. At the time, early twentieth-century residents used a much broader definition of “refugee” than we use today. The term “refugee” included internally displaced people and did not necessarily connote being persecuted or unable to return home. We know surprisingly little about how refugees were treated by receiving communities, including those people fleeing the forest fire in 1910.Footnote ⁶ Most of the literature on the fire, which was commonly referred to as the Big Burn or the Big Blowup, focuses on the heroic actions and tragic deaths of firefighters, the dramatic escapes from rapidly advancing flames, the immediate influence of the fire on national politics, and the long-term effect of the fire on Forest Service policies.Footnote ⁷ How communities aided the 4,000 to 4,500 refugees receives minimal attention.

The historical examination of catastrophes is in a state of flux. In the past, somewhat surprisingly, researchers of welfare practices have left the investigation of natural and manmade calamities to other scholars.Footnote ⁸ Recent tragic events, however, such as the devastation of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, have spurred a renewed interest in natural disasters as fertile topics for historical inquiry, including studies of welfare practices.Footnote ⁹ Michele Landis Dauber, for instance, has extensively examined one component of aid to refugees, the development of federal disaster relief.Footnote ¹⁰ Dauber charts the evolution of federal assistance from “private bills for the relief of individuals” to legislation encompassing “a defined class of claimants” suffering from a particular catastrophe.Footnote ¹¹ She explains that these appeals for direct federal assistance increased in frequency in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and were successful when claimants presented themselves as “morally blameless victims” of a sudden disaster.Footnote ¹² Most important, Dauber emphasizes that federal disaster relief established the political, legal, and rhetorical framework for creating much of this nation’s modern welfare policies. “Proponents of the New Deal,” argues Dauber, “built their programs over the scaffolding of disaster relief.”Footnote ¹³ Thus according to Dauber, the significance of federal disaster relief rests with its lasting, permanent, influence on this nation’s welfare policies. The responses to refugees after the Big Burn, however, cast a different light on assistance to refugees. This article reasons that relief for refugees at the local level reveals highly responsive, yet varied, informal community welfare practices that generally, but not always, succeeded in caring for refugees. These local responses to refugees were temporary, leaving no long-lasting influences on welfare policies, but these practices were usually very effective, at least in the short term. Durable relief lasting beyond the initial crisis, however, proved beyond the capabilities of local relief committees.

A close examination of how early twentieth-century residents cared for refugees allows us to trace the largely unexplored networks of informal community welfare practices. Researchers, for the most part, have been able to sketch only the faint outlines of such informal assistance. Kenneth Kusmer has chronicled, for example, how tramps received meals from strangers, especially from working-class residents.Footnote ¹⁴ Despite Kusmer’s efforts, it is extremely difficult to gauge the scope and the degree of importance that informal assistance played in a community’s welfare practices. By its very nature, informal assistance left scarce clues and only scattered documentation for historians to track. Absent any permanent link to a philanthropic institution or a governmental body, evidence of informal aid quickly vanishes with time. The Big Blowup offers an opportunity to thoroughly inspect the informal welfare practices of the time. Even though the responses to displaced people in localized disasters tended to be rapid and informal in nature, the Big Burn pushed out so many people from so many communities that there are numerous sources to mine, albeit still highly fragmented and incompletely documented. Despite the Big Blowup’s enormous scale, the event more closely mirrors much smaller localized disasters rather than larger calamities since local residents assumed complete responsibility for refugees, without any federal or state assistance.Footnote ¹⁵ And this absence of federal and state aid echoed the experiences of the vast majority of communities that grappled with disasters.Footnote ¹⁶

An inspection of early twentieth-century informal aid for refugees fundamentally challenges our standard depiction of local Progressive Era welfare practices as anemic and unresponsive to those in need of help. Scholars have generally labeled the Progressive Era as a time of widespread but largely unsuccessful welfare reform. During the turn of the century, for instance, a diverse group of reformers and settlement house disciples attacked a host of societal shortcomings, including child labor, infant mortality, contaminated food and drugs, and prostitution, to name just a few. In addition, activists succeeded in having many state legislatures approve mothers’ pensions, blind benefits, and workmen’s compensation. At the time, Mary Richmond, Jane Addams, Julia Lathrop, and others assisted in creating and professionalizing the emerging field of social work. Yet despite this whirlwind of activity, many historians have found that most of these measures or movements failed to meet or even approximate their creators’ original intentions or goals. As a consequence, authors often conclude that turn-of-the-century welfare practices remained not only mostly unchanged but also inadequate and unresponsive to those in need of assistance.Footnote ¹⁷

But a close exploration of Progressive Era informal relief for refugees reveals evidence of more responsive local welfare practices than the standard narrative would suggest. The inclusion of these informal networks in part changes our view of local assistance by substantially expanding the number of welfare tools communities utilized to help those in need. Informal relief generally mixed with formal practices (both publicly and privately administered), forming a tangled organic system of welfare networks and policies. This blurring of informal and formal assistance mirrors the mixing of public and private aid during the Progressive Era that historians have repeatedly documented.Footnote ¹⁸ The informal aid offered by the citizens of Missoula provides a clear example of the importance of this type of assistance when aiding refugees. Missoula’s informal help proved remarkably efficient, effective, and, at times, flexible and innovative. Local residents, under the guidance of businessmen, quickly organized to deliver food, shelter, clothing, and transportation to people fleeing the fire. This response created a comprehensive community-wide safety net for the refugees that partially utilized existing institutions while also creating an entirely new system of assistance. In the short term, one to ten days after the fire, the distribution of aid by Missoula was generally widespread, generous, and occasionally responsive to the very specific needs of some refugee families.

However, as admirable as Missoula’s spontaneous safety net proved to be, the reaction in Spokane clearly demonstrates the major drawbacks to a reliance on informal aid. While one community’s informal aid network could expand quickly to care for a sudden influx of people and could organize an all-inclusive response, those in other communities could be completely unresponsive. Without any mandate or requirement to aid refugees, communities could and did decide for themselves whether to offer assistance, often regardless of refugees’ needs. Spokane, led by its business class, chose at first not to help the roughly 1,200 fire victims that poured into the city. By the time Spokane decided to offer aid, most refugees had already returned home. This absence of universal assistance meant that refugees encountered very different relief efforts depending on which direction they fled. Arriving in Missoula or Spokane meant experiencing two completely different types of relief. Even when communities like Missoula and eventually Spokane established informal assistance, these relief efforts did not translate into the implementation of useful long-term measures for fire refugees. Lacking substantial funding and coordination from the state or some other entity, Missoula’s and Spokane’s localized informal relief organizations possessed neither the means nor the will to operate lasting assistance. Thus, within a few days or at best a few weeks, the relief efforts folded, curtailing the possibility of long-term aid. These two major weaknesses, a lack of universality and an absence of long-term help, illustrate the shortcomings of depending too heavily on informal assistance to meet a community’s welfare needs during a crisis.

This highly varied and fluid response to refugees highlights a key contradiction in Progressive Era welfare practices. The ad hoc, local committees that were formed to aid refugees quickly were generally highly effective in providing for the short-term needs of displaced populations, even though these organizations lacked permanence and institutional ties. Yet this informal local aid could also fail. Not all communities chose to immediately help incoming refugees and long-term assistance measures fell far short of needs. Our understanding of Progressive Era welfare practices literally changes depending on which community, and which situation, we choose to examine.

Escaping the Fire

The forest fire had to grow into a powerful destructive force in order to drive at least four thousand people from their homes. By mid-August, more than three thousand fires had started in the heavily forested region.Footnote ¹⁹ While some of the fires were contained, an extremely understaffed Forest Service left many remote fires to burn unattended for weeks. On August 20, 1910, the situation suddenly changed for the worse. With hundreds of small and large wildfires burning in the region, the winds began to pick up, fanning flames together into a raging inferno. Historian Stephen Pyne believes that the fire grew large enough to produce a windstorm, further increasing wind speeds.Footnote ²⁰ These winds ripped century-old trees from their roots, pushed the fire up into the crowns of trees where it leaped from treetop to treetop, and quickly spread the fire up and down mountainsides. Survivors of the fire vividly recalled how swiftly the flames advanced, estimating the velocity at sixty to seventy miles per hour.Footnote ²¹ These powerful winds carried huge burning branches a mile or more in advance of the flames, spreading the fire far ahead of fire lines and making it appear as if the fire had sprung from nothing. In short order, fire was suddenly everywhere.

Once the fire swept down on residents, regardless of location, most had few choices but to get out by any means and routes available. People often had to make split-second decisions as to which way to run as the fire came roaring upon them. Firefighters caught in the forests tried to outrun the flames or, recognizing the futility, looked for any form of protection—submersing themselves in streams, taking cover in railroad tunnels, or ducking into mining shafts. Homesteaders likewise tried what seemed best. William J. Smith recalled using wet sacks to fight the flames at his uncle’s homestead. Despite his diligent efforts, Smith and his uncle eventually had to abandon the homestead and run from the flames.Footnote ²² Residents in towns also fled in a chaotic manner. In Wallace, locals used various modes of transportation to get out: horses, wagons, and on foot. But most fleeing residents piled into trains racing out of town. Nearly all of the patients and nuns from Wallace’s Providence Hospital, for instance, scrambled aboard a Northern Pacific train.Footnote ²³ As people moved out of settlements like Wallace, others from surrounding areas poured in, thinking that towns would be safe places.Footnote ²⁴ Suddenly thousands of people were on the move throughout the thickly wooded mountains. From Thompson Falls, Montana, came this report: “Sunday evening a special train came in bringing the refugees from the burned section around Trout Creek. . . . Monday others arrived . . . dirty, foot sore and exhausted, having spent a night and a day picking their way through the burning forest. Prospectors, miners, fire fighters, and ranchers came tramping in from the hills seeking safety in Thompson Falls.”Footnote ²⁵

For two days, August 20 and 21, the thousands of fires collectively became a raging inferno, the Big Burn, before slowly dying out over the next few days as the winds dissipated. The fire consumed an estimated 3.2 million acres of densely forested lands, an area roughly equal to the size of Connecticut. In Wallace, approximately one-third of the city, the eastern portion, was lost to flames. As the fire progressed, it killed eighty-five people, including firefighters, homesteaders, miners, and residents in towns.Footnote ²⁶ On August 24, temperatures dropped and the humidity rose as a thin blanketing of rain and snow fell across the region. On September 4, a heavy rain soaked mountains and valleys, ending any lingering threats from smoldering flames.Footnote ²⁷

Missoula’s Rapid and Effective Response

As refugees poured into Missoula, residents quickly responded to their needs. Indeed, the rapid speed and efficiency with which locals set up and implemented assistance for the forest fire refugees was truly noteworthy. Within a matter of a few hours, or even in less time, residents had pieced together lodging and meals for hundreds of new arrivals. The patterns witnessed in Missoula are, by far, the norm throughout the region as communities offered immediate help to refugees. And the structure of the informal assistance in smaller towns mirrored Missoula’s, differing solely in being reduced in scale.Footnote ²⁸ Missoula’s informal assistance tapped into its existing institutional organizations and resources (both public and private) while forging a new and much-expanded welfare system.

Missoula, with almost thirteen thousand residents, received only a few hours’ warning before refugees began arriving. During the early morning hours of August 21, a Northern Pacific Railroad dispatcher phoned the Daily Missoulian offices to inform the town that “a special train loaded with Wallace refugees” would arrive in the morning.Footnote ²⁹ By the time the train had left both Wallace and neighboring Mullan, Idaho, approximately 150 passengers were onboard, and an additional 150 people would be picked up along the tracks in small mountain towns and settlements.Footnote ³⁰ Newspaper employees immediately called Mr. A. J. Breitenstein, secretary of the Missoula Chamber of Commerce, and Mr. C. H. McLeod, manager of the Missoula Mercantile Company. These quick calls, first to the newspaper and then to Missoula’s prominent business leaders, appear completely instinctive, if not logical. The Daily Missoulian and both Breitenstein and McLeod could rapidly mobilize people and resources to provide for the incoming refugees. This bypassing of elected offices such as the mayor or county commissioners during these first hours foreshadowed the secondary role that these officials would come to play in the overall relief efforts.

Breitenstein and McLeod did indeed successfully rally a cross section of the town in those early morning hours. McLeod “opened up his stores and warehouses so that supplies could be had,” while Breitenstein proceeded to contact the Grand Pacific Hotel and the Florence Hotel to cook and serve breakfast for the incoming refugees. Breitenstein also placed a notice in the morning newspaper asking lodge members to meet the trains. McLeod provided “hams and other meats,” and “Mrs. F. S. Lusk sent a plentiful supply of eggs.”Footnote ³¹ Residents placed tables and chairs on the railroad station’s lawn to serve the food and “ambulances, automobiles, and street hacks were standing ready to be pressed into service.” Volunteers from the Chamber of Commerce, the Woman’s Club, the Order of the Eastern Star, and the ladies of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Order of the Railway Conductors were on hand to assist.Footnote ³² After exiting the train and eating, the refugees, many of whom were exhausted, dirty, and only wearing their night clothes, were taken to the Masonic Hall, where volunteers determined who had friends to stay with, who had money for a hotel, and who needed assistance. Mrs. Graffenberger and her four children, along with Mrs. William Graff, for example, were given two rooms and a bath in the Grand Pacific Hotel at no charge.Footnote ³³ Four hours later a second train arrived with 350 more refugees, and that same evening a third train with 250 people onboard pulled in; each group repeated the same routine as the morning passengers.Footnote ³⁴ Amazingly, Missoula’s residents, under the leadership of Breitenstein and McLeod, were able to successfully coordinate these numerous resources—food, volunteers, transportation, and shelter—with only a few hours’ notice.

The need to officially organize assistance, after the initial task of caring for the unexpected wave of refugees, provided businessmen with the opportunity to cement their authority over refugee aid. The absence of other institutional alternatives allowed the business community to fill a leadership vacuum. Philanthropic associations, except for fraternal lodges, were generally nonexistent or just recently started in most towns, religious institutions were small, and local governments were weak. In light of this leadership vacuum, the local Chamber of Commerce assumed quasi-governmental power. The almost absolute authority and control by businessmen allowed for efficient and effective immediate responses toward the incoming refugees. This marriage of business and relief assistance was in many ways an ideal pairing—at least in the short term. Well-established local businesses could immediately tap into extremely useful and vast amounts of resources in the form of cash, supplies, and buildings to aid the sudden influx of people. Leading businessmen could use their contacts to access a network of much-needed goods, as Breitenstein and McLeod did. These local assets proved invaluable in offering timely and appropriate help. Leaders quickly viewed the caring for fire refugees as a way to promote Missoula’s business interests. A week after the first refugees arrived, the Daily Missoulian acknowledged that the city had “profited” from the experience. “The local hotels and eating places did a thriving business,” declared the newspaper, which went on to estimate that the refugees had spent “more than $10,000 for food and shelter alone.” Missoula’s hospitality even translated into “the best sort of advertisement” for the community, concluded the Daily Missoulian.Footnote ³⁵

The only institutions, beside the Chamber of Commerce, that played a significant role in the informal relief effort were lodges and fraternal orders. The Modern Brotherhood of America and the Eagles repeatedly announced in the Daily Missoulian that members in distress should contact local representatives for assistance.Footnote ³⁶ The Elks took charge of the body of John G. Boyd, a resident of Wallace, who died while rescuing his pet parrot, and the Masons buried George Sergler of Newport, Washington, who left behind a wife and eleven children.Footnote ³⁷ Mr. R. A. M’vitty of Mullan observed that he had never seen fraternal orders “so strongly represented as in Missoula. I was overcome with joy,” M’vitty wrote, “when I saw them vying with each other to see how many they could help. I want to especially thank the Knights of Pythias,” he concluded, “for fulfillment of their obligations.”Footnote ³⁸ While lodges and fraternal orders were essential to Missoula’s informal assistance, still they limited their attention and resources to members only. This restricted focus, while helpful, could not possibly replace the community-wide relief efforts directed by the local business leaders.

The Chamber of Commerce coordinated relief efforts in Missoula by calling a mass meeting of citizens the morning following the arrival of the first refugee train. After discussing the matter, the gathering selected a committee of seven “responsible men” who were given “full power to act, appoint sub-committees, and do all the things necessary.” The mayor, Andrew Logan, officially chaired the seven-man committee, although in practice Breitenstein and the Chamber of Commerce independently made all meaningful relief decisions, thus blurring public and private authority. The committee immediately began a subscription list for donations and created subcommittees of clothing, food and lodging, finance, and transportation. The Chamber of Commerce rooms became the gathering and distribution location for all clothes donations and “the headquarters for all of the relief work.”Footnote ³⁹ By that evening, the committee had contracted with the Missoula Hotel for a dining room to feed the needy, serving meals to seventy-five people that night, and the committee continued placing newly arriving refugees in homes and hotels.Footnote ⁴⁰

As eager as people were to help, nobody wanted to roll out the welcome wagon for posers. The need for protection from fraud and the fear of illegitimate claims partially drove the desire to coordinate aid. Missoula’s local newspapers warned its readers that a “small army of moochers” had supposedly poured into town with deserving refugees.Footnote ⁴¹ “There are many fakers in the city,” the Daily Missoulian cautioned, “seeking to prey upon the sympathies of our people.” Readers were assured that a watchful committee would see that “all assistance is given to deserving persons.”Footnote ⁴² Not giving out cash was another way in which officials guarded against fraud. Missoula’s relief committee distributed meal tickets as a means to prevent misuse of funds. Refugees such as Mrs. William Graff could redeem these meal tickets at eating establishments in town.Footnote ⁴³

Once Missoula had established a more structured relief apparatus, fund-raising became an instant concern.Footnote ⁴⁴ Although a broad spectrum of society members donated money, supplies, and their time to aid refugees, funds from businesses overwhelmingly dominated the totals collected. This fiscal dominance translated, in large part, into administrative control, allowing the business community to dictate relief policy. Residents tried to help out by raising funds or donating goods. Mrs. J. E. Powers, for instance, collected enough food to feed at least twenty-five people, and Mrs. W. D. Kendrick and Mrs. E. S. Trump organized a Friday-night benefit ball that raised $307.Footnote ⁴⁵ Labor organizations were some of the first to give, and they often gave in a very public manner as if alerting the town to their contributions. The Plasterers’ Union No. 415 “brought in a check for $25,” and soon afterward several bricklayers and stonemasons “planked down a fine bright $50 bill upon the counter,” reported the Daily Missoulian.Footnote ⁴⁶ In the end, labor organizations donated $205 to the fund. This total however paled in comparison to the amount businesses gave. Both the Missoula Mercantile Company and the Northern Pacific Railroad, for example, each offered $250 for assistance, and the Western Montana Bank donated $150.Footnote ⁴⁷ Having raised almost $5,200 in only four days, with Missoula County being by far the largest single contributor ($500), the relief committee declared that “there was enough in the fund for the work in hand.”Footnote ⁴⁸

With funds raised and a relief organization in place, Missoula began to deliver aid to refugees more systematically. This business-dominated group successfully delivered the short-term basic necessities—food, clothing, lodging, and transportation home—that the vast majority of the refugees desired, and they provided these essential goods and services generally free of charge to those with no money. During this brief period of a few days, most people stayed and ate in the homes of friends or strangers. Missoula’s Joseph Deschamps housed Mr. and Mrs. George Demers and their two children from DeBorgia, Montana.Footnote ⁴⁹ Missoula’s relief committee made sure that even those without funds had a place to stay. One Wallace resident who fled to Missoula recalled that when a man walked into Missoula’s Shepherd Hotel without money, the front-desk clerk informed the gentlemen that the “lack of money made no difference whatever and that he surely could have a bed.”Footnote ⁵⁰ Five days after the first arrivals, Missoula’s Chamber of Commerce requested “to have the names of local people who still have with them refugees, so that it may relieve them” by placing the remaining refugees in hotels.Footnote ⁵¹

In addition to feeding and housing refugees, clothing also became an important need. Most of the refugees streaming into towns left with little to no warning, preventing any type of meaningful preparation for the trip. Refugees coming by train often were not allowed to bring many personal belongs onboard, and others fleeing by foot, horseback, or boat likewise could not carry much for very long. Thus refugees often needed clothes, and Missoula’s citizens generously donated items to the relief committee. “We have received clothing enough,” reported Mrs. Thompson, “to supply many more people than we are called upon to serve.”Footnote ⁵² The clothes collected at the Chamber of Commerce offices outfitted people, “large and small,” and, according to volunteers, “every applicant was worthy and the requests reasonable.”Footnote ⁵³

As soon as workers cleared and repaired railroad tracks, refugees wanted to head home. Refugees, often lacking any information regarding their communities, were obviously anxious to get home to check up on property damage and the fate of loved ones. The cost of getting refugees back home or relocated with friends or family members immediately became a concern for Missoula’s relief committee. During the citizens’ meeting in Missoula, “The railway men present stated that their [rail]roads would no doubt be willing to furnish free transportation to whoever the relief committee thought worthy.”Footnote ⁵⁴ In the end, the railroad companies did indeed provide free transportation for refugees approved by the relief committee, yet that free ride was not always all the way back home. The Northern Pacific, for instance, allowed refugees to travel west to Spokane at no charge, where they then had to purchase tickets for their final journey home. Missoula’s relief committee fortunately gave each refugee funds to buy their tickets in Spokane.Footnote ⁵⁵ Just three days after arriving in Missoula, refugees filled to capacity a westbound Northern Pacific train.Footnote ⁵⁶ One week after the influx of the approximately 1,200 refugees, the Missoula relief committee reported that only 175 women and children remained.Footnote ⁵⁷

There were a few instances when Missoula’s relief committee incorporated innovative solutions or embraced practices that would have been considered a bit unorthodox. For at least three families, the relief committee used funds to establish them in homes. “William Hughes, wife, mother, and three children . . . were given a house on Defoe Street and provided with groceries, blankets, and other supplies. The rent was paid by the committee.” Likewise, the committee equipped Gus Moser and his family, a wife and three children, “for living” in Saltese, Montana.Footnote ⁵⁸ And “Mr. C. F. Shannon, wife, two daughters, and several grandchildren, who came from Wallace, where they were burned out,” moved to Missoula’s south side, “where a house was secured from them.”Footnote ⁵⁹ Why these three families were chosen is unclear, although Hughes had secured a job working on the city’s sewers, and Moser was identified as an “old Missoula resident.”Footnote ⁶⁰ Regardless of the reason, these direct bequests of substantial amounts of aid, which gave families a fighting chance of becoming self-supporting, truly represented an innovative approach to helping poor residents. In general, Progressive Era private charities and public welfare offices gave only minimal levels of assistance, usually enough to partially and temporarily maintain a family or an individual at their current impoverished state.Footnote ⁶¹ And as the Moser example shows, Missoula was willing to offer assistance beyond its city limits, a rarity in early twentieth-century America. This willingness to reach into neighboring communities, counties, and sometimes even into a different state was not restricted to the Moser family. “Many requests have been received from refugees during the past few days who have reached their homes, or where they once had homes,” reported Missoula’s relief committee. “They send word that they are in need of general household stuff. The orders received will be filled and sent by freight at once.”Footnote ⁶²

Missoula’s informal assistance worked. The town’s business elite quickly decided to offer aid and tapped into numerous resources—money, supplies, rooms, existing public and private organizations, and contacts. This informal system offered a comprehensive response to refugees’ needs by providing shelter, food, clothing, and transportation. In a few instances, this informal relief employed innovative welfare practices that went well beyond standard policies of both public and private charities. In fact, this informal assistance was able to reach beyond Missoula’s city limits to give aid for those still in need. Missoula’s informal assistance dramatically expanded the range and scope of its usual community-wide welfare policies and practices. In the end, this informal relief system played a critical role in Missoula’s decision of how to respond to those in need. Missoula’s behavior of course was not unique as other communities throughout the Inland Empire used the same methods to activate their informal relief systems. Chamber of Commerce and Commercial Club members led efforts in several Washington and Idaho towns to initiate and organize their informal, ad hoc, relief responses for the incoming refugees.

Spokane’s Cold Shoulder

Although Missoula and most other communities in the Inland Empire offered effective immediate assistance to incoming arrivals, Spokane chose at first not to help refugees. Large numbers of refugees, mainly from Wallace, began arriving in Spokane on Saturday evening, August 20, aboard Oregon Railway and Navigation Company railcars. The next morning, trains brought more refugees into town.Footnote ⁶³ The roughly twelve hundred people who fled to Spokane encountered a community, especially a business community, not particularly interested in easing their hardships. This collective inaction illustrates the crucial shortcomings of Progressive Era informal assistance: not all communities decided to aid those in need.Footnote ⁶⁴ This failure to act left refugees to fend for themselves. Although the exact reasons for Spokane’s failure to act remain unclear, it seems that the opinions of a few business leaders ultimately account for the city’s unresponsiveness.

At first, it appeared as if Spokane’s citizens would, like other Inland Empire communities, quickly rise to the occasion to assist the sudden influx of arrivals. On Saturday evening, for instance, Frank W. Smith, a cigar dealer, started a subscription list to collect needed funds.Footnote ⁶⁵ And on Sunday morning, the Spokane Chamber of Commerce called a mass meeting, just like Missoula, to address organizing a response to the fire. This quick, almost instinctive willingness to help mirrored Spokane’s past behavior. The city’s citizens had gathered and shipped food and supplies to Fernie, British Columbia, in 1908, when a fire destroyed most of that town.Footnote ⁶⁶ Spokane had also experienced firsthand the process of rebuilding after a fire when an 1889 fire destroyed thirty-one blocks in its downtown core.Footnote ⁶⁷ So responding to the needs of refugees was by no means a new experience for Spokane’s residents.

Regardless of this rapid opening response, events in Spokane soon took a very different turn than they did in Missoula. During Spokane’s mass meeting that Sunday morning, the topic of discussion was apparently not how to care for the refugees already in the city or soon to be arriving, but rather how “to devise ways and means for rushing aid to Wallace,” located eighty miles east of Spokane.Footnote ⁶⁸ Initial news reports had erroneously claimed that most if not all of Wallace had been destroyed. At that meeting, the Chamber of Commerce decided to wait before taking any decisive action. “In view of the disordered conditions of things at Wallace and the necessity for getting accurate information before acting,” reported the Spokane Daily Chronicle, “it was decided advisable to send a man to investigate at once. ‘We are ready to assist in all possible ways,’” stated Chamber of Commerce president C. M. Fassett, “‘but we must act with intelligence.’”Footnote ⁶⁹ This decision by the city’s business leaders essentially halted the early efforts to organize aid for the refugees already in the city. Although both Spokane and Missoula received roughly the same number of refugees, the fact that Spokane’s population was five times larger than Missoula’s may have lessened the sense of urgency to act. The Chamber of Commerce and Spokane’s mayor did, however, quickly recruit and send nine nurses to Wallace early Monday morning after receiving a Sunday evening telegram from Wallace’s mayor requesting “10 trained nurses to care for persons burned.”Footnote ⁷⁰

Clearly not everyone in Spokane was pleased with this decision not to act. As the Chamber of Commerce waited, refugees in Spokane struggled. John Donovan of Wallace recalled that when his train pulled into Spokane, “we were met at the station by some of your citizens, who said they represented the chamber of commerce. They pointed out a number of fine hotels where they said the accommodations were good, but they did not help us any when we had no money to pay hotel bills.”Footnote ⁷¹ This delay also frustrated residents. By Tuesday, August 23, the Spokane Press sharply challenged the Chamber’s decision to focus solely on aiding Wallace. “A great big part of the fire relief work,” observed the Spokane Press, “must be conducted right in Spokane,” especially considering that many of the new arrivals came with only the “clothes on their back” and “without much money.”Footnote ⁷² Jimmy Durkin, a prominent saloon owner and liquor dealer, likewise expressed his wishes for immediate action in a letter to the editor, asserting that “there are times when people don’t want sympathy as much as they want bread,” and “that time is now.”Footnote ⁷³ Another resident decided not to wait for business leaders to act. He placed a notification in the newspaper offering a free room to any refugee or refugee family.Footnote ⁷⁴

Spokane’s hesitation in offering help seems to rest exclusively with the leaders of the Chamber of Commerce, whom, as in Missoula, assumed quasi-governmental power when it came to organizing and distributing relief. Local residents, as we have seen, were eager and willing to help forest fire refugees, but the doubts and indifference of a small group of businessmen delayed action. The Chamber of Commerce insisted, for instance, that its officers and members had encountered “no serious case of destitution” among the refugees.Footnote ⁷⁵ But these officers and members were clearly choosing not to see the very apparent needs of refugees. Samuel Galland, secretary of the Northwest Loan and Trust Company and Chamber of Commerce member, reported, for example, that “Wallace and other cities in the fire zone were in no particular need, and the food supply was adequate.” Galland’s observations were terribly inaccurate since Wallace and several other communities desperately needed food.Footnote ⁷⁶ Nonetheless, Chamber of Commerce members listened to Galland’s report with “rapt attention,” and it was this type of opinion, coming from local business leaders, that caused a delayed response from Spokane toward the refugees.Footnote ⁷⁷ One of the shortcomings of Progressive Era informal assistance in the Inland Empire was the degree of influence that a select few elites, like Galland, had in setting relief policies and practices. In Missoula, these business elites decided to act quickly to aid refugees, but in Spokane the business elite decided not to act. Although public opinion seemed to favor some type of assistance, the matter would not move forward without at least some form of approval from Spokane’s business class. Galland and other business leaders may have also been unwilling to extend assistance because of festering class tensions in Spokane. As refugees poured in, they arrived at a city immersed in both an ongoing strike by cooks and waiters and a heated debate over a proposed antipicketing ordinance introduced in the city council.Footnote ⁷⁸ Business leaders may have been fearful that aid to refugees would somehow increase these tensions or strengthen the hand of workers.

Eventually Spokane’s Chamber of Commerce finally formed a committee to address the city’s refugee situation. At the Chamber’s regularly scheduled luncheon on Tuesday, August 23, almost three full days after the first refugees arrived, president Fassett appointed a five-member relief committee. Despite these appointments, enthusiasm was not strong for the committee’s work. Mr. J. P. McGoldrick, lumber executive and luncheon participant, believed that the whole “situation had been somewhat overdrawn,” although he promised to “throw himself into the breach” to help out.Footnote ⁷⁹ But the newly formed relief committee still seemed uninterested in assisting incoming refugees anytime soon. That evening, for instance, a party of sixteen men, women, and children from Burke, Idaho, arrived on a Northern Pacific train. The group immediately went to “the chamber of commerce for assistance” but found the offices closed. They turned next to police captain George Miles for help in locating shelter for the women and children as the men “had friends with whom they could lodge.” Miles escorted the group to the Majestic Hotel, where he promised “to stand by the bill until the local relief committee should take the case.”Footnote ⁸⁰ Finally on Thursday, August 25, five days after Spokane’s first refugees arrived, the Chamber of Commerce opened an “eating house on Sixth Street,” which fed two hundred people that day and began offering clothing and lodging for fire victims.Footnote ⁸¹ Yet by that late date, most of the refugees had already departed town, absent any help.Footnote ⁸² Refugees, especially those who were cared for in Missoula, noticed the stark difference between the two cities. Mrs. Otto Graffenberger expressed her frustration with assistance in Spokane stating that “Missoula certainly did treat us fine. . . . In Spokane the first thing asked for was money. They wouldn’t do a thing for us.”Footnote ⁸³

Spokane’s delayed reaction in offering aid to refugees shows all too well the shortcomings of Progressive Era informal relief. A select few business leaders dictated the community’s response, disregarding both public opinion and the needs of refugees. Informal relief was not a system based on either democratic principles or a systematic assessment of the problem at hand. While Spokane did eventually provide some assistance to refugees, the decision was too late in coming, undercutting the potential for Spokane’s informal welfare system to provide meaningful and comprehensive aid.

Inadequate Long-Term Assistance

Although Spokane and Missoula followed distinctly different responses to the refugee crisis, both communities shared similar long-term strategies. The informal assistance that succeeded so well in assisting people in Missoula failed to deliver adequate long-term aid once refugees scattered home. Spokane’s Chamber of Commerce eventually did reach beyond its city limits to offer aid, but these efforts were only short-lived. Addressing persistent, entrenched poverty as a result of the fire, or at least poverty exacerbated by the fire, proved beyond the capabilities and interests of these local business-controlled relief efforts. Lacking regional coordination and any substantial monetary support, fire victims were largely left to their own devices to regain an economic foothold. Neither Missoula’s nor Spokane’s informal assistance efforts offered any meaningful long-term support, revealing a clear inadequacy of Progressive Era informal, ad hoc, aid.

A hint of this shortcoming appeared quickly, even as relief efforts were in full operation, in the case of John Barrett. Barrett, age seventy-five, had moved to Taft, Montana, just three years before the Big Blowup to take up ranching after leading a life as a sailor. Flames destroyed his home and “he was barely able to escape with his life.” Barrett had initially fled to Missoula and friends purchased a train ticket to take him to Spokane, where Barrett believed his brother resided. Unable to locate his brother, and at this point penniless, Barrett contacted the local Associated Charities for help. The Associated Charities “made arrangements to have Barrett sent to Seattle, where he has friends who will care for him.”Footnote ⁸⁴ How Barrett fared in Seattle is unknown, but the practice of transporting poor people out of a community, especially those with intractable causes of poverty like old age and disabilities, so as to dodge financial responsibility was a standard practice throughout most of the nation.Footnote ⁸⁵ The fact that the fire destroyed Barrett’s home and personal possessions seemed to make no impression on relief committees in either Missoula or Spokane; nor did it qualify him for assistance. Relief committees must have viewed Barrett’s poverty as largely unrelated to the fire, attributing his destitution only to his age. The informal organizations set up to aid refugees clearly were not concerned with solving a long-term case of poverty, and desired, at best, to focus on distress directly linked to the fire.

These business-led relief organizations struggled with long-term assistance in part because of a lack of interest. Businessmen obviously had other concerns and priorities centered on commerce and not on welfare. In addition, organizing and managing the assistance for fire refugees consumed large amounts of time and emotional energy. As a consequence, these business-led relief organizations quickly shed duties and prematurely ceased operating. In Spokane, the Chamber of Commerce almost immediately began transferring portions of their relief efforts to the Associated Charities, which had plenty of experience working with impoverished residents. Less than a week after the Chamber of Commerce finally decided to provide some assistance, the Associated Charities assumed partial, if not full, responsibility for screening Spokane’s relief applicants and distributing all clothing requests.Footnote ⁸⁶ Likewise in Missoula, businessmen moved quickly to end relief operations. Less than a week after the fire, for instance, Missoula’s relief committee “turned over to the Salvation army and St. Patrick’s hospital” all the remaining donated clothing and halted fund-raising efforts.Footnote ⁸⁷ And a few weeks later, Missoula’s Chamber of Commerce dissolved its relief committee, placing the executive committee of the Chamber in charge of any remaining fire-related tasks.Footnote ⁸⁸ Both Missoula’s and Spokane’s informal assistance quickly vanished, although the aftereffects of the fire continued to plague residents.

Being preoccupied with business concerns and lacking an interest in long-term social welfare were not, however, the only barriers to providing effective long-term care for refugees. Communities simply did not raise enough money to sustain long-term assistance. Spokane struggled to collect money. Repeatedly, the relief committee pleaded for more donations. “All are urged to contribute to this worthy cause,” stated one typical early appeal in the Spokane Daily Chronicle.Footnote ⁸⁹ Spokane’s difficulty in fund-raising can be linked to its initial hesitation at helping incoming refugees. By the time business leaders decided to raise funds, the refugees were largely gone from the city, reducing the sense of urgency and immediacy. In the end, Spokane, with a population of almost 105,000 residents, managed to raise less than $2,700, far less than the funds raised by the residents of Missoula (population of just under 13,000), who raised just over $5,000.Footnote ⁹⁰ Despite its success in collecting money, Missoula had distributed almost all of its funds within a week of the first refugee arrivals.Footnote ⁹¹ So even if Missoula’s citizens had wanted to provide more aid, a new fund-raising campaign would have needed to be initiated. Neither Spokane nor Missoula managed to gather anywhere near the amount of money that would sustain a comprehensive long-term relief program for displaced residents.

Because relief organizations had neither the desire nor the means to provide long-term assistance to fire refugees, the only alternative was some form of government intervention. Yet all levels of government—federal, state, and county—failed to initiate any type of continuous aid, leaving fire refugees essentially on their own. Upon hearing of the destruction near Libby, Edwin Norris, Montana’s governor, left the state’s capital to inspect the damage.Footnote ⁹² Beyond this tour, however, Montana offered no material aid for its fire victims. The state of Washington likewise offered no assistance. Governor James Brady of Idaho did dispatch Rev. O. P. Christian, state superintendent of the Idaho Children’s Home Society, as a special envoy to inspect the region. He concluded that “there is a great deal of destitution all through the burned districts, which will grow worse as time goes on. Many families are homeless, with no source of income except from donations.” Despite recognizing the need for long-term assistance, Christian recommended only that “the people of the favored sections of the state” provide “hearty support” to assist those in need of help. In the end, Christian made no call for state aid and neither did the governor offer any state assistance.Footnote ⁹³ County governments provided only minimal, if any, assistance to the refugees. Missoula County, as previously mentioned, did contribute $500 for Missoula’s relief efforts, making it the most generous of the Inland Empire counties. A handful of other counties provided small amounts of aid in the form of supplies, provisions, train tickets, and the cancellation of property taxes.Footnote ⁹⁴ This overall lack of government aid was by no means because of a philosophical opposition to assistance, at least not federal help. Spokane’s city council, for instance, passed a resolution less than a week after the fire requesting that the federal government “should at this time come to the aid of these people who have suffered by these devastating forest fires.” The city council forwarded the resolution, which had garnered applause at the time of its approval, to President William H. Taft.Footnote ⁹⁵ Yet the federal government never offered any assistance for the refugees.

Absent any meaningful government aid, whole communities were dependent on the larger cities like Spokane for help. Eight days after the fire, reports of suffering near Lane, Idaho, reached Spokane. “Some of the people there are really in need,” stated Chamber of Commerce assistant secretary R. H. Hughes. Spokane’s relief committee rushed out four stoves along with “five boxes of clothing, mattresses, bedding, and 300 loaves of bread.” In addition, the committee sent “three boxes of clothing . . . to Coeur d’Alene city for distribution among the residents of Cougar gulch, who lost their all in the flames.”Footnote ⁹⁶ Meanwhile, Spokane’s Chamber of Commerce sent a representative, Mr. E. W. Evenson, to investigate the needs of settlers near Newport, Washington, another hard-hit area.Footnote ⁹⁷ Evenson returned to Spokane with a list of needed supplies, and two days later the Spokane Chamber of Commerce purchased and shipped a full train car of materials worth almost $1,400 to Newport. The goods sent were clearly intended to provide immediate relief for burned-out families. The train car contained five tons of flour, one ton of cured meats, 1,000 pounds of sugar, 500 pounds of beans, 250 pounds of coffee, 200 pounds of rice, 50 pounds of tea, 150 blankets, 75 mattresses, 30 stoves with utensils and pipe, and 30 tents.Footnote ⁹⁸ Spokane’s shipment of supplies to Newport, Coeur d’Alene, and Lane no doubt greatly improved the immediate situation for destitute families, and the stoves and tents were useful in preparing for the coming winter. However, Spokane’s generosity was a one-time occurrence and was not repeated at a later date to resupply depleted items. In fact, the Chamber of Commerce anticipated that the supplies would last for only thirty days and expected that after thirty days the destitute would be able to care for themselves.Footnote ⁹⁹ It is highly doubtful if this one-time shipment of goods was sufficient to completely stabilize homesteaders who had lost almost everything, including homes, barns, fences, feed, animals, tools, wagons, and clothes.

Lacking any formal long-term aid, homesteaders and ranchers in particular struggled forward as best they could. Many settlers relocated into towns. Having lost all of their livestock and outbuildings, as well as their house, Mr. and Mrs. S. Weyrick and their three small children came to Newport “looking for a chance to earn food and get a place of shelter.”Footnote ¹⁰⁰ It is unclear how many of these ranchers ever permanently returned to their land. In most cases, it was the timber that contained the most value, and many settlers had planned to sell their claims to lumber companies.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Thus, losing trees to the fire and windstorm undercut much of the financial incentive for staying on the land. Of course the lack of long-term assistance made returning that much more difficult.

The informal relief systems in both Spokane and Missoula failed to offer any sustained long-term assistance. Both did reach beyond their city limits to provide some goods to refugees in neighboring communities and states. Despite these generous acts, these efforts were only one-time infusions of aid and not the long-term assistance that settlers needed. The informal relief efforts could not be sustained beyond a few weeks. Lacking money and interest, the informal relief efforts of Spokane and Missoula disappeared almost as quickly they had risen.

“The End of the List”

Aid for early twentieth-century refugees was an essential, yet varied, component of Progressive Era welfare practices, albeit a component that has remained largely invisible. The frequency of both manmade and natural disasters made assistance to refugees an important part of turn-of-the-century welfare. Wallace’s mayor acknowledged this frequency: “Well, we have had all kinds of afflictions in Wallace from floods, storms, fires and strikes and we think we have about reached the end of the list.”Footnote ¹⁰² Most Inland Empire communities quickly and generously provided assistance to incoming refugees. Business leaders organized and directed Missoula’s informal, ad hoc, relief operations in a rather flexible manner. In many ways, Missoula’s short-term relief efforts, as has been shown, were amazingly responsive and effective. Yet absent any requirements or obligations to aid refugees, not all communities or all civic leaders chose at first to help. Spokane’s business leaders decided initially not to offer assistance. And long-term relief remained largely nonexistent except for several one-time infusions of aid by both Missoula and Spokane. All of these variables in relief practices toward refugees nevertheless constituted an important segment of America’s early twentieth-century welfare practices. But because of the extremely short-lived nature of informal assistance, it has been very difficult to gauge its scope and importance. The incorporation of informal assistance in our understanding of community welfare practices alters our view of Progressive Era welfare from one of inadequate and unresponsive to one of fleeting moments of local effectiveness and responsiveness. The conclusion that one draws entirely depends on when and which community is examined.

Informal aid, with all its benefits and shortcomings, remained the dominant form of refugee assistance beyond the Progressive Era. The Social Security Act of 1935 and other New Deal measures did not significantly alter these established practices. Although Congress had occasionally passed disaster-specific relief legislation to help communities rebuild, the Disaster Relief Act of 1950 marked the pivotal shift toward permanent federal involvement with recovery efforts. The 1950 law allowed local governments the opportunity to tap into federal funds for preserving life and property, clearing debris, and repairing public infrastructure. Nineteen years later, the Disaster Relief Act of 1969 further expanded this federal participation in relief by extending aid to individual disaster victims.Footnote ¹⁰³ These and other measures no doubt improved the scope and availability of long-term relief for refugees, thus finally addressing the failures of Progressive Era informal, ad hoc, assistance. Nonetheless, as we have seen with Hurricane Katrina, disaster-relief efforts continue to need to be retooled.