Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/332

Rh editor succeeding Bert Huffman, editor since 1902, and has remained at the helm of the paper for 31 years, while the paper has main tained and extended its influence, and he has been drafted for a wide variety of public work, from regent of Oregon State College to member of the state highway commission. Aldrich and associates bought out Jackson's whole remaining interest in the E. O. in 1913.

One day in 1909 a young man dropped into Editor Aldrich's office and asked him for a job. To make a long story short, it was Merle R. Chessman, a recent graduate of the University of Oregon, and he got it. He had had no newspaper experience, but he learned fast and was soon city editor and telegraph editor of the paper—a position he held until he left for his present position in Astoria, in 1919, when Mr. Aldrich, with three of his associates in the East Oregonian—Merle Chessman, Lee D. Drake, Fred W. Lampkin — purchased the Astoria Budget from John E. and William F. Gratke and put Chessman in as editor. Since then the Astoria Budget has been conducted in connection with the East Oregonian.

Since the failure of the Tribune in 1924 the East Oregonian has been without opposition in its field.

Things were different back in 1903 and 1904, when the town had three daily papers. This brings back into the story Oscar W. Dunbar, charter member of the Portland typographical union, co-founder, with John E. Gratke, of the Astoria Budget, adventurous Alaska publisher.

There were already two papers in the town—the morning Tribune, the evening East Oregonian. "Fine," said Dunbar, "I'll start a noon paper." He had been running the weekly Pendletonian, which he had started in 1902. There had been a Pendletonian in 1871, but that didn't worry Mr. Dunbar, who was a short, thickset man with a voice like a bull's when he wanted it to be. He converted this Pendletonian into a daily paper in June, 1903, calling the new publication the Daily Guide. His plant was destroyed by fire, and he rebuilt. He had a lot of courage.

Among Dunbar's employees was young Lee D. Drake, who had just quit the East Oregonian, for financial reasons. Lee was just leaving on the relief train for Heppner after the flood catastrophe of June 15, 1903, when Dunbar got word to him that there was a job waiting for him. He was just starting the little Daily Gazette, a five-column paper, which would come pretty near ranking as a tabloid today in more respects than mere format.

The Guide, as Drake recalls (93), was the luncheon paper, popular with the business men at their noon lunches. The paper was run off on a little press that could handle only one page at a time (some of the time the paper was a four-page six-column size), and the circulation soon ran up to a thousand. Dunbar's daughter, Claire Agnes, was a reporter-compositor; Drake solicited advertising and