Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/247

238 initial step to a great trans-continental line making Roseburg the junction of two great systems of railroads!

It will reduce freight rates.

It will give us the San Francisco market.

It will open up a new country of which every mile has resources in agricultural land, or timber or mineral wealth.

It will raise the price of grain.

You want it,

We want it

Everybody wants it

And furthermore, all are determined to have it!

Just one word more.

Don't discourage it.

Don't say you can't build it,

Don't be a Mossback

Don't be a Clam

Boom the Railroad, Read the Bugle Call, Invest in Real Estate, get a move on and sing

"The Ocean to Roseburg!"

Now, after a start like that, it's a pity the project didn't succeed. The townspeople, valiantly led by their newspapers, were raising money for several years. For a time the trouble seemed to be that the railroad people preferred to connect the coast line with the main line at or near Wilbur. Then the depression of the 90's came and cut off most of the railroad building. The line was finally put through from Eugene to Marshfield in 1917.

The Review Publishing Company, with Wimberly, Floed, and Fisher associated, was organized February 12, 1891. Mr. Floed retired from the company June 13, 1902, and acquired an interest in the Marion County Democrat, Salem, with E. H. Flagg.

Shortly before this time the Review began the practice of running under its masthead on the editorial page a list of new subscribers.

Charles H. Fisher now carried his name at the masthead as managing editor, with Wimberly first as local editor, then as associate editor.

Mr. Fisher had the old Jeffersonian idea of cheap and restricted government activity. The newly created forest service was seen chiefly as an item of needless expense. An editorial in the Review now a newly established daily paper, August 5, 1898, called the rangers' work

a vacation in the mountains at $50 a month. . . and nothing more. . . The creation of forest reserves on a large scale with a big army of officials. . . is an extravagance and is wholly without benefit to the public.