Nov 4, 2014 4 min read

Many of us are accustomed to spending our Sunday mornings and afternoons perusing the newspaper, expanded that day to include more feature articles, advertisements, comics, puzzles and other amusements. A century ago, this leisure activity came a day earlier.

In the 1890s, The Daily Reporter published twice as many pages on Saturday (although on smaller-size paper),which included the latest installment of a serialized novel. The newspaper was in competition for readers’ attention that day with the Saturday Evening Supper Table, which sold for three cents a copy.

The Supper Table began publishing in 1885 and was much lighter reading that the two large dailies in Washington: The Daily Reporter and The Washington Observer. While the dailies would cram 20 to 30 stories of local, national and international importance on their front pages, the Supper Table might be content to reserve its cover for a feature about a bicycle racer. Publishers James Allen and Fred Wilson preferred to fill pages with poetry, fiction and, most of all, humor. A tabloid, it ran columns on art and music as well as one called “Gossip.”

The daily newspapers rarely deviated from their serious demeanors, but the Supper Table was quite opposite. Instead of editorials on national politics and international economics, it poked fun at local politicians in editorials dripping with sarcasm.

Some of those editorials are insightful to the concerns of the day. Following is part of one from Nov. 24, 1894, titled, “Hello! Council!”

“The attention of the city council is respectfully called to the fact that a telephone is badly needed in the police ‘station.’ This matter has been neglected too long. There ought to have been telephone connection with police headquarters long ago.

“… Council ought to remember that policemen, like common people, need exercise and amusement and they ought to have a telephone even though they never made any use of it save to ring the bell occasionally, ‘just for fun,’ as it were. Then there is another consideration. People often like to know where the policemen are, not because they want them, of course, for any purpose, but just for the sake of knowing that they are comfortable and safe, especially on cold nights. It would be a great satisfaction, too, in case of a fight, say at the Chartiers depot, for someone down there who takes an interest in the policemen, to telephone them of the fuss so they could keep out of the neighborhood …”

Today, some of us are concerned with the condition of city streets. Some of them have been causing travelers problems for well over a century.

Park Avenue from South Main Street to the city line was the subject of a May 11, 1895, editorial in the Supper Table:

“The part of the street within the borough is only 200 yards in length, yet it has been for years, and is now, in exceedingly bad condition … The portion of the route to which we have referred is much worse, or indeed, we might say, is the only bad piece of street between the town and the cemetery. It is always wet and full of holes and ruts in which the sloppy limestone water stands. The liverymen say this water cuts the paint from the wheels of their vehicles as quickly as a knife would … The expenditure of a few hundred dollars will put it in first class condition and the borough fathers could make no better use of part of the money devoted to improvements this year. The good name of the town demands it as the present condition of the thoroughfare gives many strangers who pass over it an unfavorable impression of the place.”

The same could easily be written today about any number of Washington’s streets.