Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/433

424, coming with its removal to Vale, which had retained the county seat in spite of the efforts of the Atlas.

The first editor of the Atlas, at Ontario, was Sidney D. Ross, a printer from Mountain Home, Idaho. Only a few issues had been printed when Mr. Ross closed up his shop one night and quietly left, leaving as his only claim to fame in Oregon the fact that he was there at the very first. He was succeeded by W. J. Cuddy (Uncle Bill of later Oregonian fame), who came from Caldwell, Idaho, and revived the publication. He moved the paper to Vale after Ontario was defeated in its fight. No available files of the paper give any idea of what kind of battle old Bill put up for the county seat; but he was beginning to show signs of the picturesque quality which, in his paragraphs, delighted readers and, occasionally, gave jitters to editors-in-chief. Here's the way he handled a railroad conductor who mistreated his passengers (164):

"The crossest, sourest, grumpiest and groutiest passenger conductor on the line, named Larson, is in trouble, and people from Green River to Huntington tenderly ask if it is sufficient to hang him. He kicked a passenger off his train while running, was arrested at Pocatello and committed. Perhaps it would have been better if the victim had settled it with his gun. Larson has been promoted crab-fashion to a freight, and his removal leaves a full corps of gentlemen punchers. Goss, Riche, Francis, Johnnie Mac, Hall and Bell are good enough for any line."

And that was the longest local (or semi-local) item in the whole paper!

The Atlas was a five-column, four-page affair at the outset and was enlarged, before its removal to Vale, to a six-column four-page. Yearly subscription price was $2.50. After publishing the paper in the new location for a time, Editor Cuddy suspended it, in 1890, and went to Portland, where he was, for 35 years, ad compositor, linotype operator, head proofreader, editorial writer, and editor of the weekly on the Oregonian. He died in Portland in 1925, aged 71.

The second paper published in Malheur county was the Malheur Gazette, established in 1889 at Vale by S. H. Shepherd. This paper promoted Democratic politics for several years, until he sold it to the Gazette Publishing Company. The new owners later changed the paper's politics to Republican. Among the editors who succeeded Mr. Shepherd were William Plughoff, Democrat, a later editor of the Argus; J. E. Roberts, active in Oregon journalism on several newspapers (Shepherd, Plughoff, and Roberts are deceased); Lionel R. Johnson, who as late as 1936 was a columnist on a Los Angeles daily; and J. W. McCulloch, a resident of Portland, who served as United States district attorney for Oregon.