Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/126

Rh from May to the end of September, 1864, was sent to Salem to two months reporting the legislature.

This took both him and Mr. Pittock, who was state printer, away from Portland at the same time, and Jim McCown, assistant foreman under Pittock, was more or less in charge of the paper. McCown used to obtain editorial contributions from Corbett, Shattuck, and others as previously mentioned. One day Judge Shattuck, who had been observing young Harvey W. Scott, Pacific's young graduate, then serving as city librarian while studying law, made the suggestion that this scholarly and studious young man, with whose record at Pacific University he was familiar, though he had not been one of his instructors, would be a likely source of good editorial copy.

Thus Harvey Scott came to the Oregonian as a part-time editorial writer, collecting $15 a week for his work as editor and librarian. After the first of the year, Clarke left the paper, and young Scott's contributions became regular.

It is pretty clearly established that Mr. Scott became editor of the Oregonian in May, 1865, though in an article written for the semi-centennial of the Oregonian, December 4, 1900, close to 40 years after the founding of the daily, H. L. Pittock, publisher of the paper, says in so many words:

"Mr. Scott became editor of the Oregonian in 1864. I was led to invite him to the editorship largely through the offices of the late Judge Shattuck."

In the same anniversary issue, on the same page, Mr. Scott, in a signed article, wrote:

"His [Simeon Francis'] successor [in 1862] was Amory Holbrook, an able man but an irregular worker. After him, John F. Damon, now of Seattle, and Samuel A. Clarke of Salem were editors. In May, 1865, Mr. Clarke resigned, and Harvey W. Scott succeeded him."

Mr. Scott's version agrees with the description of the situation given by George H. Himes and other contemporaries.

Of his educational equipment for his editorial work, probably no one was better fitted to speak than Dr. Charles H. Chapman, second president of the University of Oregon (1893-99), who for six years