Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/46

Rh a general neglect of Oregon by the American government—which at the time, it must be remembered, was busy extending the southwestern frontiers.

A few months later, the Spectator gave two-thirds of a column of its space to a communication signed "A Friend to Fair Trade" urging organization of a company with a capital stock of "six or eight hundred thousand bushels of wheat" to drive the Hudson's Bay Company from the country. The Spectator, however, did not comment, saying, simply, "The article speaks for itself."

These were the opening guns of an extended battle between spokesmen for the farmers and the mercantile interests. Long communications appeared, not always free from bitterness, on each side, with the paper itself maintaining a neutral attitude while giving generously of its restricted space to the argument sent in.

The longest bit of local news appearing in the Spectator of March 4, 1847, was an article 1¾ columns long dealing with "a meeting in Tualatin plains, to devise means to prevent our (the farmers') ruin, by the refusal of the shipping merchants to do for us a freighting business, and the exorbitant price upon the necessaries of life." At the meeting steps were taken to procure wheat for flouring, and to arrange for the building of a ship by the farmers and mechanics of Oregon, so that they might "get into one harmonious whole for the purpose of taking care of" themselves "rather than re main a burden upon those who sell goods only for accommodation."

Following this, a two-column article told of a Tualatin farmers' meeting at which a proposal of George Abernethy, governor of Oregon and influential member of the Spectator's board of directors, to flour wheat for the farmers of the Tualatin valley was accepted unanimously. Resolutions adopted covering a column and a half of space were concerned mostly with rules for the formation of the Oregon Producers' Exporting and Importing Company—stock to be taken in shares of 100 bushels of wheat each or its equivalent in available funds. The newspaper is taking some interest in the farmers' economic welfare when it devotes such an amount of space to this meeting. As usual, the influence of the paper in stimulating interest in developments even without giving definite editorial indorsement is recognized in the request made of the officers that they present the account of the meeting to the paper for publication.

The newspaper, it must be said, displayed proper standards of ethics in connection with the farmers' dispute with the companies (particularly the Hudson's Bay organization) by printing without comment a 1¾-column defense of the wheat-purchasing policy of the company, signed Observer, which employed copious statistics in support of the claim that the Hudson's Bay Company was treating the farmers fairly. Regardless of the merits of this controversy, it is apparent that the newspaper's columns were used to in-