Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/277

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BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES
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enlarged to seven columns. Its editor and owner was James M. Goodhue, a native of Hebron, New Hampshire. He has been aptly described as "the James Gordon Bennett of Minnesota."

The early issues were printed under difficulties. The only available printing-office was the basement of the only public house in St. Paul. The editor in describing his early experiences said that it was as open as a corn crib, and that the pigs in seeking shelter under the floor frequently jostled the loose boards on which rested the editorial chair of The Minnesota Pioneer.

Such editorial assertions as, "He stole into the Territory; He stole in the Territory, and then stole out of the Territory," got Goodhue into serious difficulties—difficulties out of which he escaped only with the help of his fist and a pistol. Like James Gordon Bennett, he published full accounts in The Pioneer. An editorial tribute published in The Pioneer on September 1, 1853, says of Goodhue, "Many of his editorials would have done no discredit to The New York Herald in its most palmy days." Goodhue died on August 27, 1852. His successor was Joseph R. Brown.

Other early papers of Minnesota may be briefly mentioned. The second was The Minnesota Chronicle, first published May 31, 1849, at St. Paul, with James Hughes, a former resident of Ohio, as its editor and proprietor. It was a Whig paper of the same size of The Minnesota Pioneer. The third paper, The Minnesota Register, had its first issue in St. Paul on July 14, 1849, though an earlier number had been printed in Cincinnati, Ohio, dated Saturday, April 27, 1849, and had been sent by steamboat to St. Paul for distribution. A monthly missionary sheet was the fourth paper: printed half in English and half in the Dakota language, it was called The Dakota Friend. Goodhue made an interesting comment in his paper on March 6, 1851, when he said, "The little press at The Chronicle office has been horribly twisted and distorted by printing the crooked Sioux dialect of The Friend." Colonel B. A. Robertson brought out the fifth paper, The Minnesota Democrat. In order to give the people of the other side a newspaper, Elmer Huyler, a tailor of St. Anthony,—now Minneapolis,—issued on May 31, 1851, The St. Anthony Express, the sixth newspaper. Other papers,