Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/196

Rh which his activities in Grants Pass in the last 40 years, for he was selected from the staff to help to clean up the Sun's business affairs after the failure.

While, in cold history, it is not a fact that C. S. Jackson founded the Journal, such is practically the case. What happened is, that he rescued it from the very edge of that limbo which had made room for previous competitors of the Oregonian and Telegram. March 10, 1902, a campaign paper was started in Portland by A. D. Bowen called the Portland Evening Journal. It struggled from the start for lack of nourishment.

Arthur Brock, veteran Portland printer, recalls when the paper was set up on two rented Linotypes, one of which he operated. The publisher had not been able to install a complete plant of his own.

Bowen did not have very great success with the young Journal; yet t would be unfair to judge him entirely on that particular phase of his career. He was, indeed, a man of great versatility still is, for he is keeping his inventive mind working while he lives at Stevenson, Wash., not far from the scene of his early newspaper adventures, and mothproof paper bags with cellophane windows, and "hardwood boards" made from redwood bark are among his recent inventions (51).

For a time, Bowen had managed the Portland Telegram  under Oregonian ownership. At the time of Dewey's victory in Manila Bay, May 1, 1898, he worked up a 60-word cablegram into an extra which was the only one issued in the Northwest (it was Sunday). Mr. Bowen recalls being the first to promote the Lewis & Clark exposition of 1905, waging a campaign which the Oregonian took up and helped put across.

After leaving Portland he promoted and built railroads in California, Alberta, and the Middle West, manufactured electric-railway equipment, organized a paper mill at Bellingham.

But the Journal was started in the days before Mr. Bowen had any capital to speak of, and it was hard to get much backing in a field where so many papers running opposition to the Oregonian had come to grief. His first issue came out March 10, 1902. His managing editor was William Wasson, capable newspaper man who later went to Washington as correspondent for the paper.

One of the first employees—who practically forced himself on the none-too-receptive Wasson as a candidate for a job—was