Speech by Giles French on History and Community in Oregon

Friends, not only friends of the library, but friends of mine I hope. Now, that's a nice name for any organization to start off with is friends. I think that's very good. I've said was set here a while ago, thinking about that. When E.R. Jackman was asked to ... by Mr. Metzger of the old Oregon, was asked to write a review of the cattle country of Peter French for the old Oregon. Jack wrote me a letter and somewhat of shock, and pleasure too, to think that old Oregon would ask him, a representative of Oregon State, to review a book. So I am in just a little the same situation because I did attend Oregon and now here I am at Oregon State, making a talk. But in a way it pleased Jackman and it pleases me. I am glad to be here.

There's a few things I'd like to say about this organization. There is in the state of Oregon a number of organizations that are engaged in gathering of records. All of them are to some extent and mostly the great majority of their finances comes from the state. And to that end, they are in competition with one another in a way. There's the Oregon Historical Society which is the official depository of historical records in the state. There's the University of Oregon, there's Oregon State College, Pacific or Portland State which are just getting in the racket. And there's the state archivist. So we have these organizations in competition

with one another -- and Senator Hoyt here will be interested, I suppose, when the Ways and Means bills get up to see how much is the state of ... the state taxpayers are paying for this competition, which I maintain is not necessary at all because they're all trying to gather these things and if we did have some way to reproduce it -- all of them. And if we had a decent inventory of them, which we haven't, the Historical Society is engaged now in cataloguing all of their information, but I don't know whether they'll ever get it done or not because I sometimes think they are getting is faster than they can get it catalogued. It's a tremendous job to catalogue 50 or 60 or 80 years of material. But in a way they're working at it. But if that is the ideal that we could all work toward, and I can

assure you that if you go out and are too active in gathering material, you will stir up opposition, and it is unfortunately true that the more you bid for these things in the way of money or something else the higher the price is going to go for grandfather's papers and the more the result is, that the tendency is to sell it to some California library. That's the truth. That's what happens. And so that is a rather important thing and I do hope that all these people can get together and keep it here and in the state of Oregon. And I'm glad to see so many librarians because I like librarians. Librarians have done a great number of nice things for me to go places and ask some kindly old lady at the library desk and she just sends

girls out here and bring you more stuff and you can read in two weeks and if you're away from home and anxious to get done something, well they're a great help and they're wonderful people. My next wife is going to be a librarian I can tell you that. So I'd better get back to the business at hand. Before I even start to talk about the influence of newspapers on early day communities I should warn you that I am talking about different communities and different newspapers that extent today. The newspapers have changed because of vastly superior mechanical improvements and the wonderful achievements and communications of the past 80 years. These have helped newspapers obtain information to relate to their readers and of caused of the development of many other communication facilities that compete with newspapers and tend to make small town newspapers almost obsolete, except for their function of spreading local information and speaking for their

communities. Both are important. These functions I am sure will not soon be lost for I have talked with men who have travelled and studied in Europe. And they say that there are still newspapers there: local newspapers I mean, and perhaps not as many as in the United States but they survive under as vigorous and useful as their owners and editors cause them to be. The editor of the newspaper in the 80s in Oregon was nearly always the owner. He obtained most of his information about the world outside his bed awake from exchanges and big newspaper did not mind exchanging with smaller newspapers on an equal basis, for such exchange was helpful to both. Now such exchange is seldom done. Editors writing long items from other papers. Sometimes a straight news and sometimes the basis for comment. Either in agreement or for the purpose of caustic comment if in disagreement.

The editor held a peculiar position in the early day community. He was presumed to be better educated than the average. Adept in skills to which the ordinary citizen could not aspire. His word wasn't necessarily taken as law, but he obtained his information first and he had his say first. Opponents had to develop their own resources for information and had to play catch up ball. Editors had to be writers. If there was too little advertising, and there usually was too little advertising, he had to fill the columns anyway, either with quotations from other papers, with self-written stories, or with expressed opinion. They did so because they were individuals and had ideas that they wanted to express. But the difference between newspapers of early days and those we now read daily or Weekly, were not nearly so great as the difference between communities.

The Pioneer community was composed of Native Americans mostly, for The influx of new citizens from foreign lands did not begin until most of the communities were established. The Swedes, the Germans, the Irish, came to settle communities not to the frontier In it's raw stage. It was the southerners who left the South in droves for the West in the decades after the Civil War. It was the sons of the middle boarder who moved farther west when they could see the smoke of a neighbour's fire in Iowa and Illinois. It was a restless youth of New York and the descendants of the original Yankee traders who moved west to make up the majority of citizens in early communities in the West, certainly in Oregon. The names of original homesteaders were English names. They were also the most independent and adventurous of a particularly independent and

adventurous breed who came to make a fortune and a new life in the West, and they didn't care how wild and woolly it was. They could cope. It is, I think, right and proper to say that these men and these women too were self centered persons who were used to depending on themselves. They didn't really need a newspaper until their hopes and ambitions widened to include an interest in a community, and of course this was long before governments became so well organized that they sent agents into every community to give advice and gradually take away local leadership by assuming it. Sometimes aided by money that universal solvent of human will, of human spirit and of human independence. There were no county agents in a Pioneer community. No forest

Service, no Bureau of Land Management, no welfare group. None of the gaudy trappings of modern government. The communities were independent because they had to be and because they wanted to be. The first newspaper published in Eastern Oregon was The Dalles Journal, which Captain Thomas Jordan, commandant of the fort, was editor. It was soon changed to The Mountaineer, a more appropriate name. And it lasted as a weekly or a Daily well past the time when The Dalles was at the head of river navigation and the scene of a portage railroad to the Ci Smith Boat Landing at the mouth of the Deschutes River, where up river navigation began. Every day packed trains of horses or mules were loaded for the long trip up the John Day to the mines at Canyon City or Austin and freight teams were busy loading the little portage cars with freight for Umatilla landing and Lewiston.

Colonel Henry E. Dice told of these days in the Oregon Historical Quarterly. Days when he worked for Block Millard and Company in The Dalles, who had the only mercantile company in Oregon with a stone building. And it did big business outfitting for the mines. These were heady times for a newspaper man. If he made any money, which few did, he could gamble it away at George Clayton's gambling house on poker, faro, or three-card monte. Dice was the gold buyer and bought fifty thousand dollars worth of gold in a month. Everything in The Dalles flourished and the frontier village of 2500 was proud of the Daily Mountaineer. As miners and stockman moved out across the bunch grass hills of Eastern Oregon, they established communities that soon demanded newspapers from which to learn of what was going on in the world and in which they could boast of what the communities could become.

Newspapers were started as early in Eastern Oregon as in the Valley, which was settled first but not much more thickly than in the open country. By 1868, there was a newspaper in Canyon City, one in Marshall, the forerunner of Pendleton, in 1865, in Prineville in 1880, in Heppner in 1883, Baker in 1870, and Fossil in 1886. Up in the Nez Perce country there was a paper by 1884, a few short years after the days of Chief Joseph. These old papers were often well-written and more likely than not were well printed. Anyway they came to be, they can be read in this day even with this eye destroying microfilm. There was a body of newspaper men in those days who went about starting newspapers.

They usually got five hundred dollars and that was enough to buy the proverbial shirt tail full of type, and a Washington hand press, and a few cases... perhaps a job press. The newspaper starter thereupon departed to start another one after selling out into small profit. Some were possessed of appetites and were not countenanced in early day communities, which, despite the stories sometimes told, were rather strict morally. In fact, grandpa's conduct was considerably better than grandsons. Many, if not most papers, were started with local capital in the manner described, and therefore, the newspaper was attached in a financial way to the power structure of the community. There always is a power structure. Every community has one. Every county and every state. Sometimes it is the local banker, less often the elected officials. Sometimes it is the businessmen. If there be no

responsible person, persons or group capable of such leadership, the range will be assumed by lesser men and nothing much will happen. But in every community there is someone or some group that must be talked to, if there is going to be any change or even action. There have been examples of Oregon, in Oregon when the power structure was a bunch of vigilantes. Witness Prineville in the 70s and early 80s when the local newspaper on the local power structure worked together, the community made progress and if the program was wise they progressed in the right direction. Heppner is a good example of this. The first editor of note of the Heppner Gazette, was John W. Reddington. Maybe you've heard about John Watermelon Reddington, a fabulous character. He was a rebellious redhead but he was trained by early employment on the

Cambridge University Press by service in the army and as an Indian scout he was trained to respect authority. He did not brook opposition very well and had an almost disruptive battle for control of the community. But in general he was able to represent it. Then came Otis Patterson who got along during the late eighties and almost to the nineties when Heppner made great strides. In those days, the major source of original income was from livestock and the John Day valley produced more stock than any place in Oregon. It was rich in cattle and sheep and horses and every town wanted to tap it with a road. Patterson aided and stimulated the citizens of Heppner to build a road south into the John Day country. And that is what made Heppner a bigger town than any that tapped the region, except Pendleton, that had other resources and Baker, which for years had an income from mining. The

Dalles lost the John Day trade because of public inertia and that certainly was partly due to the inadequacy of its newspapers. When the Oregon short line came across Idaho to Ontario and across the Blue Mountains and down the Colombia in 1883, it stimulated many towns along its right of way to develop delusions of grandeur. Some were going to become second Chicago's. They began to look to the outside world instead of paying primary attention to the agricultural and livestock interests that had made them a town in the first place. Only a few were able to maintain a major interest in both. Some became railroad towns as did Le Grande. And when the railroad consolidated its shops, sometimes later it had little to fall back on. Mining remained a source of income for Baker for years. The Dalles is still in search of industrial development instead of giving its primary attention to the agricultural area

surrounding it. It takes time to develop a helpful editor. He must have time to study his community and learn about its people which are the tools he has to work with. A community whose editors come and go like a tenor and sheepherders doesn't get much of anyplace and the aims of the community must be realistic. They must be such as to win the support of history. A community must have a workable plan toward a realistic goal. Note the experience of birds when the homesteaders flooded the valley of the Blitzen in the late 80s and 90s, the merchants of the town and the county were persuaded that Harney County would become a great agricultural area. People with happy and prosperous farmers, sold the merchants and the newspapers, there were several of them. Supported homesteaders to the disadvantage of

stockmen. When Peter French was murdered in 1897, the Burns Paper gave the shooting a mere six or seven inches. Big stockmen were of little importance to the Harney County power structure of 1897. So what happened? After 40 or 50 years of trying, it was determined that what grows best in that elevation and climate is grass. So there are no farmers and the stockmen are bigger than ever. It is possible that an editor in Burns in the mid 90s could have made a name for himself by supporting Henry Miller, French Glenn and the other big cattleman. He might have had trouble eating but he would have made a reputation for farsightedness. One of the bad habits of newspaper men in the early times was that of rushing into every little town and setting up a hand press and a few cases of type and starting a newspaper. More reprehensible

still was a habit of starting two newspapers in one town. One might have been inadequate... two always were. This often divided the power structure and brought on public arguments, and even fights until the community could not show a united front. This, there is almost no record of a community showing real progress when it is divided either by two newspapers or two factions. In the newspaper business, competition is not the life of trade, it is more often the death of effectiveness. If I give the impression that a newspaper editor of whatever vintage must be correct in judging the future to be successful that is just what I'm trying to say. There is nothing exceptional about it. Success depends on good judgment in every field of endeavor. It is usual to recount the arguments and

flamboyant words used by early editors in discussing early news and newspapers, but even the argument between Nesbith and J. Quinn Thornton, was no more a moment to the affairs of the time than the froth on beer. It's a solid work that people do, and newspapers do. That is of the importance to their community. Think what good Harvey Scott did for The Oregonian. It might have been a looters paradise if it hadn't been for him. And there was lots of looting going on in early day Oregon anyway. Editors, of course, come in all sizes and of all philosophies. The most entertaining editor may not be the best, although in order to be effective an editor must write so as to be clearly understood. And if it is possible he should be easily read, preferably entertaining. An editor writes to

be read and the first thing he'd better do is to see that he is read. In these days, of course the political leanings of the editor were usually in those days, the of course the political leanings of the editor were usually well known and he was expected to pursue the platforms of his party religiously. But he could often interpret them as he chose. That is what party platforms were and are for, to be interpreted by any adherent whose prejudices incline them to that party. Some place in this speech I should make clear the difference in editors between the pale, pallid kind that run a newspaper for dollars and for the business and decline to take sides on any issue not previously decided, and the robust mover and shaker who helps decide issues with his pen.

There are those who decide what should be in their paper and then write it or have it written. They are the effective ones. There are those who publish what happened only and they are the slaves as it were of events. The first group influences the destinies of communities, the second doesn't. Charles Sprague said that he had exercised more influence over public affairs as a newspaperman than as a politician. Both kinds of editors succeeded in staying in business and sometimes it seems the pale editor stays longest, but he doesn't have nearly as much fun nor does he exert much influence on the destinies of the community. Recently newspapers have gotten into the hands of chain owners which probably gives them better financing.

The reason for the chains so far has not been the dissemination of ideas. They do not propagandize, in fact they seldom write very strong editorials.. are seldom equipped to do so for the editors are changed around so often they barely get acquainted with the communities problems before they are sent to another field. Some of these are local chains, started because one newspaper man had money to invest and a neighboring newspaper had reason to borrow. Often in the state-owned chains, the editor has some freedom of expression for the aim of ownership is strictly economic. So long as the balance sheet is favorable the editor can say what he pleases. But the man who owns his own newspaper is more inclined to express himself freely and feelingly than the one who has whose sole

interest is in the paycheck. Chain newspapers have brought about some queer combinations, some that wouldn't have been believed a few years ago, like the Bend Bulletin, together with the Longview, Washington paper, buying the Le Grande Observer and then acquiring the Baker Democrat Herald. Considering the competition between the La Grande and Baker, that's impossible to believe, if it hadn't happened and it is pertinent to remember that the mighty Oregonian is itself a part of a chain which also contains the Oregon Journal. The editors of both seem to retain almost complete freedom of expression. But we would not expect them to take the resolute stands that did Harvey Scott when his editorials were helping make Oregon great or those expressed by Sam Jackson when he came down from Pendleton to challenge Scott in The Oregonian. Perhaps the papers that are growing fastest in prestige and patronage,

are the two Salem dailies and the Eugene Register Guard, and they are all privately owned and operated. Papers come to be known by their editors and this was true in the early days as well. It is impossible to think of the Oregon Statesman without thinking of Charlie Sprague and his vast experience in government and wisdom in living, or until a few years ago in the Salem Capital Journal, without thinking of tough little George Putnam. In the long editorship Frank Jenkins came to be the voice Klamath Falls, which has progressed remarkably due in part certainly to his careful study of the area's potential. Bob Sawyer of Bend and Ed Aldrich of Pendleton impressed their character on their communities and editorialized for changes that would benefit them. Morrow Chessman of Astoria was long the advocate of the fishing interests and worked for a deeper channel in the lower Columbia.

Claude Engels had lots of fun describing the imbecilities of the original New Deal and Bob Rule at Medford spent as many words defending it. These were perhaps not early day editors although most of them are dead but in their time they constituted as strong a band of writers and promoters of communities that could be found in any state. There were weekly Editors working at the same game but they of necessity made a smaller splash because they usually had a smaller community under their influence. They were, however, sometimes the originators of ideas and certainly some of them contributed to the gayety of the areas. Clint Haight of the Blue Mountain Eagle used to express some pretty wild ideas but his readers knew he was Clint Haight, and it was

Eddison Bennett when he ran the Irigan Irrigator. Isn't that a wonderful name? Wrote droll stories that made his little and short lived paper memorable. Harold L. Davis used his experience as editor of the tiny Antelope Herald to write a prize winning novel...Honey in the Horn. It seems easier for a small town editor to relax and help his readers enjoy themselves than it is for the editor of a big impressive sheet, Size and influence sometimes bring stuffiness. As sort of an aside, let's take a look at the names of some of these early day papers, all weeklies. Some of them expressed action like the Blade at Baker, The Hornet at Corvallis, and you wouldn't have expected conservativism from the Advocate which was published at Le Grande, nor from the Bell, that was over at Albany. Nor from the Disseminator at Harrisburg.

There was a Korean-American that existed for years in a town now barely big enough to rate a post office. And a Progress at Klamath Falls and surely the Live Wire at Pendleton was worth reading or else belied its name. At one time and at the one time delightful community of Westfall in Malhuer County, there was a little newspaper called Our Western Ways. I'd like to have a copy of it. The Patriot of Powers matched The Great American and the Philistine at Weston matched the Skeptic at Pendleton, and everyone may be sorry that the Tax Liberator at Roseburg had so short a life, and for purely sentimental reasons, be sorry at the demise of the Bunch Grass Blade at Lexington. Can you think of

a more appropriate name than the one John H Cradleball gave to his paper at Hood River...The Glacier. It will be presumed that the newspapers of early day communities was the only force working for the common good. But they had a fairly clear field in that endeavor. The ordinary citizen took a greater interest in community affairs than he does now when government of one size or another has taken over many of the obligations of citizens, and deprive the citizen of his independence and self-reliance. Now his main function is as a taxpayer. Seventy or eighty years ago there was hardly a chamber of commerce in the state and there was no service clubs to pick up the details that a Chamber of Commerce might miss or neglect. The power structure, or if you prefer, the establishment and the newspaper had the job of

community advancement to do. Maybe it would be well to delineate some of the methods used, although they haven't changed in several centuries. To the outside world they were all errant braggarts. They boasted of the quality of the soil, the strength of the grass, the presence of minerals often without basis. The solidarity of its citizens and the ease with which a new comer could achieve financial independence in their midst and they were ready to fight any one with purse or pen who doubted a word of it. Certainly the most important factor was the planning that went on. If successful they were able to point a community toward profitable and attainable goals. There were dreamers in those days who thought and said that the semi-arid hills of the mid- Columbia were suitable for the raising of fruit when actually the only fruit that thrived year after year was a durable gooseberry.

There were those who were sure that there were coal under some of the rim rocks, although the country was almost entirely of decomposed volcanic rock formed in the process that would have consumed coal eons before. There were the advocates of development of manufacturing, who were at least a hundred years ahead of time for the West like consumers for industrial products. The community that progressed was the one that made best use of its natural resources. In the Columbia Basin the communities that encouraged a man who came to raise wheat was a successful community. In the higher plains of southeastern Oregon the successful communities were the ones that encouraged the stockmen. Timber wasn't much of an asset until there was more population to demand lumber. How, you may ask, did these early day communities and newspapers know

what things. Pioneers had uncanny judgment and in many instances the newspaper man was the one who did the most reading and gathered the most information or eliminated the apple orchards and financial ruin eliminated the early day coal miner. The rest of the community profited by their example. Wisdom and foresight are not the exclusive property of any one generation. If you want a modern example look at McMinnville which a few years ago was a sleepy little Willamette Valley town, aided by nearly all the civic organizations of the town and headed for some time by the editor of the newspaper, Phil Bladine. McMinnville has become the location for numerous small manufacturing plants. The town has enough sufficiently skilled labor, the room and the climate and is progressing after some years of undistinguished agriculture. Planning or wisdom is

not the exclusive possession of the educated and certainly not of government agencies. Oregon State University tried for years to get the wheat farmers to grow corn and field peas without success. And it's established an experiment station near Burns to show cattlemen how to grow crops and changed it recently to show them how to get rid of sage bush and build better grass. Early day editors were in on all of this, either by shouting in their columns or plotting in the back rooms. It is a major function of a newspaper and perhaps the most important and it may be well that they do a little bit better, a couple of generations ago. I thank you people for listening while I read this, and I assure you that I wouldn't read it except that Mr. Waldron wanted a copy of it and the only way that I knew how to get him a copy of it was to write it out.

I am.