Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/282

Rh existence, the county-division ferment noted in the Harrisburg Nucleus a few years earlier reappeared. In 1893 there was rather strong agitation for dividing the county into Lane and Blaine counties, and Mr. Moorhead was sharply criticised at Eugene for his fairly consistent support of the proposed division.

In an anniversary editorial published in 1926, Thomas Nelson wrote: "When and if on leaving Junction City we are held in as high esteem by the people as S. L. Moorhead we will feel that our work here has not been in vain."

Moorhead ran the paper in an eight-page five-column format. Four of the pages were ready-print. It was published every Saturday. The subscription price was $2 during the greater part of his stay at the helm.

In June, 1914, the publisher sold to George H. Baxter and moved to Cowlitz county, Washington. February 1, 1915, Baxter was succeeded by William C. Parry, who changed the publication day to Wednesday and made it a four-page six-column paper. The young publisher's health soon failed, and he died late in 1918, after having reported for a time on the Oregonian. L. W. Charles succeeded him as publisher.

Don Carlos Boyd, a native Oregonian fresh from the Astoria Budget, purchased the Times in January, 1919, and carried on excellently. The next October he sold a half interest to Thomas Nelson. When Boyd sold to E. Watrous, Mr. Nelson remained as partner. Soon Mr. and Mrs. Nelson purchased the Watrous interest.

Mr. Nelson grew up at the printer's case in the day of "tramp printers," and he is rather proud of having himself been a "typographical tourist." "When crossed the Snake river into Oregon in 1889, on the 'blind baggage,'" he once said, "my worldly possessions were six bits in cash and an extra pair of sox." He was foreman of the old Daily Reveille at Baker, partner in the John Day Sentinel, proprietor of a commercial printing plant in Eugene. His experience includes virtually all positions on newspapers from devil to managing editor. Mr. Nelson is musician (leader of the orchestra in Junction), and inventor, having to his credit bits of printing equipment and a 13-month calendar scheme, on which he says he has not found anyone antedating him (1896).

Under Mr. Nelson's regime the paper promptly installed a linotype, the first issue set on which appeared December 11, 1919. The paper also adopted the metropolitan policy of changing the size to suit the amount of business, and while the usual size was eight pages, ten were not infrequent. In April, 1920, Mr. Nelson moved the home—where the linotype and paper into a new concrete-floored everybody else would be a bit happier.

The publisher regards as the outstanding achievement of his ad ministration the paper's instrumentality in securiny the Horton wood