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July, 1917

Phil Bates lost track of the number, and it was the umpty umpth annual convention of the Oregon State Editorial Association that President E. E. Brodie called to order in the Umatilla County Library at Pendleton, Friday, July 13, 1917, and President A. E. Voorhies dismissed in the park pavilion at La Grande Sunday night.

From ﬁrst to last, the sixty or seventy newspapermen present and their hosts and families and guests listened to forty-four speeches, consumed seven bountiful banquets, not counting the luncheon President Farrell of the O. W. R. & N. gave the ladies in his private car, travelled together 316 miles in a train de luxe, taken three automobile trips running from four to ﬁfty miles each, and had spent at a rough estimate about six cents a head.

Pendleton, Joseph, beautiful Wallowa lake high in the Cornucopia mountains furnished the background for the meetings, and incidentally furnished nearly every thing else the heart of man could desire.

The convention program was a serious one, full of topics of professional interest; every paper received close attention, and many of them extended discussion. There was a close responsiveness between audience and speakers, which was perhaps never better shown than when E. B. Piper, editor of the Oregonian, called on late in a long hard day for his delayed paper on new laws affecting the press, refused to read it, but plunged into a wealth of personalities and humorous reminiscences of notable journalists he had met in his long career.

Mr. Piper, in fact, was rather the cut-up of the party all along the route, and only at the principal banquet Saturday night in the Eagles-Woodman Hall in Pendleton did he call on his big reserves of earnestness and force of purpose.

Frank Irvine, of the Journal, present for the ﬁrst time in years but pleased with all he heard and now expecting to attend regularly, was the other member of the Damon and Pythias act of eloquence and humor which was put on nearly every place the train stopped. The splendid contrast the metropolitan editors made was well expressed by Bruce Dennis at La Grande when he described to the people there what had happened at the Pendleton banquet the night before.

Those two speeches should serve as a guide and motto in the Work of state defense work, he declared. Irvine, personally the best loved of Oregon editors, with his tender love of country and lofty ideal of patriotic Americanism and human justice, no less than Piper, whose words had descended like a thunderbolt upon our American complacence and obliviousness to the life and death character of the struggle in which the country is engaged. Like dynamite he said it was, telling the necessary but shattering truth.

On the regular program, lively discussions began with the ﬁrst paper, in which W. D. McWaters, of the Paciﬁc Paper Co., predicted an immediate and steady rise in prices, Col. E. Hofer and Edgar McDaniel directed some artillery preparation and O. C. Leiter charged up with the ﬁndings of the Federal Trade Commission. The conclusion was the appointment of a committee to devise means of pooling purchases by counties and otherwise, consisting of A. E. Voorhies, D. C. Sanderson of Freewater and C. L. Ireland of Moro.

C. H. Fisher spoke on help and wages in the light of what might be expected from war conditions. He said he was a poor hand to treat the subject because he never 5