Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/55



The book contained a good bit of useful information for the old-timers in the eight counties of Oregon, which covered all of the present Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and that part of Montana and Wyoming west of the Rocky Mountains. This vast region then, according to the almanac for 1848, had a population of about 6,000, considerably fewer than now live in the little city where it was published within sound of the falls of the Willamette.

We come now to another publication, even shorter-lived than the Spectator proved to be. Not long after leaving the Spectator, George L. Curry was out with a new paper in Oregon City, the second newspaper of old Oregon. Peter G. Stewart, Oregon City watchmaker, is credited with suggesting the name of the new publication.

"Why," Stewart is quoted as having said, "since you don't want to be muzzled, don't you call it the Free Press?" So the Free Press it was; and Publisher Curry took for his slogan the words of Justice Story:

"Here shall the press the people's rights maintain, unawed by influence and unbribed by gain."

The sands of journalism are free of any deep "tracks or trenches" left by the Free Press, which is remembered chiefly for its establishment as a protest publication, for the interesting personality behind for the obstacles overcome in getting going, and for the peculiar end which overtook it. The paper was only 7½×15 inches in size, four pages, with two columns to the page; and when one knows the circumstances of its birth one can see why was not more impressive.

Let us remember that this was pioneer Oregon City; that only one paper, not two, had been contemplated at the time when the Spectator founders brought their little plant from the Atlantic coast, a journey of several months. There was very little surplus type for any purpose in the Northwest, and no available press. Curry had the choice of waiting months for a press to arrive from the East or of having one custom-made out here. He had one built, mostly of wood, in Oregon City. He managed to get the type, 80 pounds of it, from the Catholic missionaries, who had been expressing themselves French. They were therefore short of w's. Since journalism is so largely concerned with the "five w's," the who, what, when, where, and why, Curry whittled some of these useful letters out of hardwood. Copies of the paper reveal also, even to one