Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/205

196 and after a year or so it was decided that we would move across to the west side. We got an office directly across—west—from the city hall and there started to get out a four-page, seven-column paper. By this time we were given a little more money and had two reporters at $12 a week each.

I still had no wire service. Karl Bickel, former president of the United Press, was the UP correspondent with an office in the Journal. Every day about 11 o'clock the joint office boy of the editorial and business office strolled into Mr. Bickel's office. Mr. Bickel would not be at his desk, but on his desk would be a pile of flimsy. This the office boy jammed into his pocket and tore back to the News office. We made little or no progress but still kept up the transparent fiction that Voorhees and I owned the paper.

One of Scripps' sons—I have forgotten which one—came in one day, and I stoutly maintained that I had never heard of E. W. Scripps and never had anything to do with him. My obstinacy drove him into a fury. He showed me his watch, his cards, and everything he owned, trying to convince me that I could talk frankly to him.

At this time on the east side Dana Sleeth was running a weekly paper raising hell with the city council, and I hired him and immediately took on a lot of trouble. Sleeth had a capacity for indignation which facts could not cramp.

One day out of a clear sky we were notified we should buy a lot and erect a building to cost $50,000. We went south a few blocks on Clay street and bought a corner and put up a one-story building. I don't recall that we had more than 1,500 circulation at this time. I got acquainted with a labor editor named Harris [R. A. Harris of the Labor Press], and made a deal with him to set his type and print his paper. The weekly payments were enough for me to buy a second linotype on credit and pay for an additional operator.

I have forgotten how we got hold of an old single-deck Potter press. We had one stereotyper and one pressman, two linotype operators and a foreman, two reporters, myself as editor, a business manager, and a circulation manager. After about two years I got tired of this and went back to Seattle.

I learned afterwards that all this secrecy was due to the fact that old man Scripps had promised Jackson of the Journal that he would not start a paper in Portland if Jackson would take the United Press. When left, Voorhees was still business manager and Sleeth succeeded me as editor. Boalt came down from Seattle later.

The date of the first issue of the East Side News was Septem-