Page:Editor and Publisher, November 27, 1909.djvu/6



The Author of Who's Who column in the Saturday Evening Post says of Harvey W. Scott, editor of the Portland Oregonian:

When the Palmy-Day Boys get together to mourn over the decadence of things they usually start with the stage; but along in the proceedings somewhere they let loose a good, sobbing mourn for the old-time newspaper editor, the individual editor, you know, who was the paper and on whose words an adoring constituency hung over the breakfast-tables every morning, the chap who wrote that strong and vigorous English and who howled at his political opponents, "You lie, you villain, you lie!" at least six days a week, and wrote an editorial for Sunday advising a meek and lowly conduct of life.

"They've all gone," the Palmy-Day Hoys groan, "all gone except Marse Henry, and he isn't what he was. Greeley and Raymond and Dana and the elder Hennett and Prentiss and all the rest have gone, and now we have editors who are at the behest"—always at the behest—"of the soulless corporations, owned body and soul by the plutocrats"—and much more similar mush.

Passing by the fact that, perhaps, it is just as well, I beg leave to call to the attention) of the Palmy-Day Boys that there is one editor of the old school in this broad land of ours; cue individual editor who is as individual as the way you like your eggs; one writer of vigorous English who is the paper and who has his impress on it and through it as indelibly as the fossil footprint of a megatherium on a Wyoming rock, and that that same editor is Harvey W. Scott, of Portland, Ore., who owns, edits and controls the Portland Oregonian, one of the big papers of the Pacific Coast, a man with an individual individuality that is peculiar, personal, positive and particular.

When we talk of the grand old men of journalism the first conversation should be about Harvey Scott, aged more than seventy, writing leaders every day, running his paper at full pace with the times and with all the modern methods and improvements in newspaper making, boss and director, and wielding a club with just as good an effect as he did years ago. If there is a job of head-smashing to do in Oregon or elsewhere on the coast you can hear this old warrior snort for two blocks as he goes into the fray. No delegation of the work to younger men by him. No, sir! He takes a running jump into the thick of it himself, and when he comes out he has all the scars of battle and usually a lot of the trophies.

A grand old fighting man is Scott. In his early life he killed Indians out in the Puget Sound country, and in his later life he has been killing politicians, and he has a lot of notches in his quill. To be sure, it is possible to find men in Portland and Oregon and all the Pacific Coast country who say things about Scott that are not fit to eat, but he has lammed most of them. Politics in that country are more intense and personal than elsewhere. They take a three-hundred-and-sixty-five-day interest in it each year, and they breed animosities and foster friendships that endure for eternity. Naturally, in fifty years of editorial writing Scott has miffed a lot of people—almost as many as he has biffed. However, he goes along, calm and serene, and takes no stock of that. It is all in the day's work. If he thinks it is in his province to crack a head he cracks it, careless of consequences either to the head or to himself. A first-class fighting man.

He has been with the Oregonian, first as editorial writer and later as editor and owner, for nearly fifty years. He has taken an active and vital part in the varied politics of all that time, not as a leader, but as the editor of a partisan paper, and he has cut and slashed right and left, and still has a fancy assortment of cuts and slashes left for future use. He has built up the paper from a little frontier journal to a great modern daily, and in the building up he has maintained the character and vigor of his editorial page, which is not usual with great papers that have grown from small beginnings.

Scott has always been a Republican. He has supported Republican policies and Republican candidates, but from time to time he has deemed it necessary to step aside and take a large, general and comprehensive crack at both party policies and candidates, in which case the howls of pain could be heard from San Diego to the Snohomish Slough.

He has been a theoretical free trader, but only between seasons and never when the policy of protection was at stake. He has always claimed that the free-trade theory is correct, but the operation of free trade is not practical. Some of his fights with other Oregon political leaders are historic, notably the one with the late Senator Mitchell, which lasted for years, with no quarter on either side.

Scott came to the Pacific Coast country when he was seventeen years old He joined a militia company and hunted Indians all along Puget Sound. Then he put himself through school, doing all sorts of manual labor to get money for his expenses, pinchingly poor, but determined to get an education. When he had graduated he went to work on the Oregonian—then a small paper in a small city—to write editorials. He has been there ever since, and is now the principal owner and has been for years.

Scott educated himself, in a measure. He was a great student of the English classics and from them acquired the large command of English he has. He has studied and read books all his life and his range of information is marvelous. He appears to know something about everything. Now and then he will write an editorial article for his paper on some erudite subject that bears the impress of the study of a lifetime, and now and then an article on some passing fad of the moment that will show an expert and comprehensive knowledge of contemporary affairs that his cleverest, nearest-to-the-pulse young reporter envies. He is as versatile as he is forceful, and always in the clearest and simplest English.

Those who do not know the old warrior well complain that he is moody, even snartling, at times captious, censorious and unkind.

Perhaps, occasionally, he does appear so, but his moods are not long-lived, and his close friends say he is a most delightful companion, a good story-teller and a fine, likable old chap. He is at his best when talking of English literature. He knows it all, even to the ability to quote long passages from the great poets and dramatists. And, unlike many a student of literature, he does not live in the past. Scott is right up to the minute on every current event.

The hard life he lived when he was a lad and the struggles he had made him frugal as to his personal expenses, but when it comes to spending for the Oregonian or for any large project he lets go without limit. He is rich now, but lives as simply as he did when he was struggling for a foothold, guarding his personal expenses with as much care as when he had no money and got but little for his heavy labor.

You can find men in Portland and in Oregon who will curse at him in all known languages, from Siwash to Sanscrit.

His fifty years of fighting in the columns of his paper have bred him a crop of enemies of whom any editor might be proud. You will find men who swear by him, as men do by every positive man who has been unafraid. Balancing the two extremes, casting up. if you like, the biggest man in Oregon is Harvey W. Scott, who has done a great man's work in a great man's way in developing and building up his state:ind his territory.

He is a big man, with shoulders almost a yard across, a deep barrel of a chest and a gigantic body. His head is large and set on a massive neck. He looks stern and forbidding, but he isn't, except at times. He is genial, pleasant and companionable, fond of company and with such a varied store of knowledge that he is most entertaining in conversation.

Every day, when he is in Portland, he goes to the office and writes his copy, and takes a general supervision of affairs.

In 1896, when the free-silver craze swept the West, Scott, who did not believe in free silver, or in bimetalism, or in anything but the single gold standard, kept the Oregonian unswervingly in the gold column. The West was aflame for the doctrine of Bryant, but Scott pounded away for gold. He saw the circulation of his paper dwindle to almost nothing. He saw the entire Pacific Slope wild about silver, but he kept hammering for the gold standard. Politicians, including some now prominent in the Republican party on the Slope, were yammering that sixteen to one was the salvation of the nation, but Scott wouldn't have it. He was for gold and he said so every day in a series of the most forceful editorial articles. When election came Oregon was the only State in the far West that went for McKinley. California split and the rest were for Bryan and sixteen to one.

Even Scott's fiercest critics will admit he kept Oregon for gold in that fight, and he considers it the most notable achievement of his busy life, for he did it in the face of circumstances that would have discouraged any editor who was not the original Stout Heart.

You can get all sorts of opinions about Harvey Scott in Oregon. He has hammered so many men that he is bitterly hated by one faction, and he is as well beloved by another; but whatever the opinion may be, whether from friend or foe, there will never be dissent to the statement that he is a first-class, two-fisted fighting man, a grand old warrior, and long may he wave.

"Down in the tropics we don't get the newspapers from home every day," .said the man with the tanned face, "and when we do get them it isn't a matter of skimming through them in a hurry, as a man would do up here. news paper with real news from the United States is something to treasure up.

"When the steamer comes in that brings my week's accumulation of papers from home I just skim across the first pages to see what has happened of importance. Just a case of looking at the headlines for me. Then I take the papers and put them in order of their dates.

"Each morning when I sit down to breakfast 1 take one paper. I read that carefully through from the first page to the last. If 1 can't get through with it before noon I don't hurry, but make it do for the late evening, too. The next day I take up the next date, and so on. We get about one mail a week, so 1 just about get through with one batch when the next is due."

His hearer, who had been in the trollies himself, was able to testify to the thoroughness with which the exiles read the newspapers.

"You fellows beat me."' he said. "I know whenever I get down to one of the stations I always find folks who can ask me more questions about the details of articles in the newspapers that I hardly read at home than you would think possible.

"It gives a man a pretty strong sense of how quiet the life must be in some of those places. I should think some of the newspapers would be worn out the way the men go over every bit of news which is almost forgotten matter by the time it gets to them."

"It isn't the men alone," said the ex-Consul, "who want to see the papers. It would amuse some folks to see the women studying up the autumn and winter styles and discussing the pictures of some fur piece or heavy coat, with a thermometer up in the nineties and not showing any particular signs of falling. Of course when it comes to the summer things they naturally want to know, because they have a chance to make use of those fashion hints: but the idea of a fur coat a few degrees north of the equator is a good joke."—New York Sun

The Hannibal (Mo.) Courier Post has increased its capital stock.