Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/72

Rh Dryer, who was general factotum on his paper, carried a blurb for his advertisers, using a defense of advertising which has since been worked out statistically, proved and extended by advertising experts in answer to theorists who lament the cost of advertising to society. Said the Oregonian editor:

"Those of our readers who desire to purchase goods cheap will do well to look over our advertising columns, as it is proverbial, that those who advertise liberally always sell more goods, consequently can sell at a smaller profit."

Mr. Dryer also carried an editorial indorsing the proposed Portland and Valley railroad from Portland to Lafayette and promised to comment extensively later.

Another bit of economic matter was a short editorial urging the laying out and improving of public roads "and thereby making access to and from the rivers, which will always be the great highways by which the products of the country will seek a market, as well as the receipt of supplies." Nothing, said the editorial, "is more important to a new country than early attention to this phase of development."

The new Oregon donation land law was praised in a 150- word editorial.

Governor Gaines occupied four columns of space, or close to 17 per cent of the whole amount; two and a half columns were given to his message to the legislature and a column and a half to his report to the President of the United States.

Mr. Dryer may have been a real city editor in California, but he didn't work very hard at that end of his job in Portland. The first issue of the Oregonian contained only three short local items. There was no evidence of any local news reporting whatever.

In discussing any institution so extensive and varied as the press, the danger of over-generalizing is obvious. It is amusing to recall the strictures of certain politicians and, on other occasions, some Christian ministers, on the sins of "the press" when it was only a single or an occasional newspaper that had gone wrong. It need not be assumed that the press as a whole has consistently been one grand, uplifting, enlightening, and educating influence on mankind. "The press," a human institution, is subject to all human weaknesses. It however, and has been through its history, the most effective instrument for promoting and protecting liberty and stimulating the general spread of political, economic, social, and cultural advance. Such, in the main, has been its record in Oregon from the beginning.

The Oregonian, oldest newspaper of continuous publication in the whole West, is, on the whole, typical of such leadership. The paper had been started right on the heels of the '49 gold rush to California. Oregon was being heavily denuded of its population by the rush for treasure; toll was taken of every industry, every business, every