Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/285

276 suspended for a week or so and then come out under another name. . . these little vacations came so regularly that I began to enjoy them—I would go hunting. Thus Miller and Noltner struggled along, issuing their publication under three or four different names. There was talk at different times of providing Mr. Miller a residence at Fort Alcatraz, with board and lodgings at the expense of the United States government. . ..

The date assigned by Thompson for the sale of Miller's interest in the paper to Noltner was the spring of 1864. Thompson's own departure from Eugene came soon afterward, for reasons having no journalistic significance. He had helped Henry Mulkey, a political prisoner, to escape and sensed that, for a time at least, the Eugene environment would not be healthful. After a time the flurry over the incident blew over, and Thompson felt free to return.

A short stay on the Albany Democrat and some work on a Salem paper was followed by a summer spent in the hills up the McKenzie river, where he put on 50 pounds in weight. He then came back to Eugene and went to work for Skaggs on the new Guard.

It had not been so very long since T. J. Dryer had turned the Oregonian over to H. L. Pittock rather than keep up the struggle of trying to pay him wages as a printer. Skaggs was having similar trouble, and that's how the masthead came to carry the firm name Thompson & Victor. As Thompson told the story:

"After I had worked there about two weeks the proprietor said to me, "I can't make the paper go. It will give me a black eye if the paper suspends publication while I am the owner. If you will take it I will give you not only the Washington hand-press and the type, but two bundles of paper and two cords of wood.""

"In fact," said Thompson in another version, I was given the office on a promise to run the paper and keep it alive. I so far succeeded that after a year and a half I sold out, clearing $1200. The paper, the Eugene Guard, is still in existence."

With this money Thompson, then 23 years old, went to Roseburg and started the Plaindealer.

Close reading of Thompson's book fails to reveal one single reference to his partner, Victor. He did, however, refer to Victor in the interview with Fred Lockley.

One of Thompson's memorable achievements with his Eugene Guard was his successful campaign for a better school house for Eugene. For five months he kept up a continuous battle, bringing on a business men's boycott that threatened the paper's existence. A skunk (it appears) had come up through the floor of the old