Seeing Red
Sixty-eight years ago this week, on October 22, 1952, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy made his first political visit to Washington state in order to campaign for Republican presidential nominee Dwight D. Eisenhower and incumbent Republican Senator Harry P. Cain. He also hoped to speak out about the dangers of Communism in America, but his trip didn't turn out quite like he had planned.
McCarthy missed his first appearance in Everett when his plane got socked in by heavy fog in Portland, Oregon. He had to speak on behalf of Cain by telephone from Vancouver. He arrived late in Seattle the next afternoon, and instead of giving two more scheduled talks, he opted instead to prepare for his speech that evening at the fourth annual Gridiron Banquet, hosted by the Washington State Press Club.
Unbeknownst to McCarthy, the Gridiron Banquet is a traditionally unserious event, where members of the press crack jokes and throw verbal potshots at everyone. The senator seethed as he sat through the folly, and became angrier when he was heckled during his speech. The heckles became jeers and boos when McCarthy badmouthed General George Marshall, who was widely regarded as a hero for his role in rebuilding postwar Europe with the Marshall Plan.
McCarthy finished his talk and left before the end of dinner for an appearance on KING-TV, but his troubles weren't over yet. When he arrived at the station, KING-TV officials requested that the senator remove two paragraphs from his planned talk that appeared to be libelous. McCarthy refused and his telecast was cancelled. As he left the station for the airport, he threatened to have the station's broadcast license revoked.
Back in Washington D.C., McCarthy never filed a complaint with the FCC, but he continued his attacks on those inside and outside of government that he perceived to be Communists. Two years later his public support began to fade -- partly due to investigations by journalist Edward R. Murrow, but mostly due to McCarthy's actions at the much-publicized Army-McCarthy hearings. Before the end of 1954, Joseph McCarthy became one of the few senators to be disciplined through censure by the U. S. Senate.
Info Spread
On October 25, 1864, telegraph lines finally reached Seattle, greatly increasing the speed in with which Northwesterners received news and information. Four years earlier, when Abraham Lincoln was winning the 1860 election, it took 16 days for the news to travel west, first by telegraph to California, then north by horseback and steamer. Even then, an Olympia newspaper marveled at the speed with which it obtained the election results, stating, "The annihilation ... [of] time and distance seems incomprehensible."
But with telegraph lines in place, news came much faster. When the Civil War ended on April 9, 1865, it took two days for word to reach Puget Sound. When Lincoln was assassinated a few days later, Washingtonians knew about it within hours. By the end of the decade most of the country was wired by Western Union, and people marveled at how easy it was to communicate from coast to coast.
Then, in 1878, Seattle got a glimpse of the future when Western Union demonstrated the city's first telephone. By 1883 the city had its first telephone exchange -- with 90 subscribers. A decade later long-distance telephone service connected Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, and Spokane. By the turn of the century telephones were supplanting telegraphs as the primary means of cross-country communication.
