Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/411

402 already founded the South Dakota Tribune before coming west. He was brought out to California by M. H. DeYoung, founder of the San Francisco Chronicle, who had met him in Chicago where Worthington was doing a bit of work for the Milwaukee Journal. This was in 1887. He did night police for the Chronicle in those highly colorful San Francisco days, then went north to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. From Seattle he came to Klamath as a handsome young man of 28 to found the Express. Two years later he was a delegate to the state Democratic convention. His journalistic monument in Klamath was an illustrated souvenir edition of the Express, a splendid job, which, circulated all over the United States, very likely did a lot to bring settlers west to the Klamath country just about the time he was making up his mind to return east.

Farnsworth and Pierce ran into heavy weather immediately, and in December, 1895, their plant was attached by creditors. Pierce, however, was able to get back the paper in January, 1896, and promptly turned the Express into a free silver-fusion organ. He was succeeded October 27, 1902, by Roy Hamaker, who made the Express independent in politics.

J. Scott Taylor, taking his first plunge into journalistic waters, bought the Express in May, 1904, and made the paper Democratic again. Mr. Taylor conducted the Express until 1911, when, late in the summer, he sold it to A. C. Wrenn, backed by the Klamath Development Company. Taylor made the paper a daily, Klamath's first, in 1907, calling it the Morning Express. For this he needed a news service. He therefore arranged with an Ashland man to buy the Portland Evening Telegram daily off the Southern Pacific train, and telephone him the high points in the day's news. For transmission purposes the editor leased the telephone line from Ashland to Klamath Falls from 9 to 10 o'clock each night; this Mr. Taylor half-proudly, half-humorously, with the Hearst phrase of the day in mind, styled "the shortest leased wire in the world." (156) The Telegram would not have reached Klamath until the next day.

The story goes that Taylor was regarded as "good competition" by the Evening Herald, which, directed by W. O. Smith, did a lot of composition for Taylor, whose plant was inadequate. No great effort was made to collect for this, on the theory that should any thing happen to the Taylor regime, the next one might be stiffer.

Rumblings of the "courthouse fight" of later years were heard during Taylor's editorship. He reminded those agitating for a new site that contrary to their contention no money could be obtained from the sale of the old site to help build the new courthouse since under the terms of donation the site would revert to the previous owners if not used for courthouse purposes. Taylor was a Prohibitionist in days when Oregon was wet, and he strove for local option in Klamath.