became co-manager with him, and together they purchased the paper. They sold to Clarence Hedges, formerly of Salinas, California, in 1915, but Litfin remained as manager. In 1920 Litfin and W. P. Merry, real estate operator and fruit-rancher, bought the paper, and January 1, 1923, Merry sold to Litfin, who became the sole owner.
And here is the part of the story that is good for newspaper men's souls. Accustomed to dictating the policy of the paper, regardless of ownership, for 30 years,62 several of the advertisers, soon after Ben got the paper, demanded that he suppress the news of a sensational divorce case involving a prominent business man. A boycott was threatened. Ben went to a meeting called by some of the advertisers for the purpose of telling him where to head in. He spoke to them briefly.
"I'm going to print the news," he told them, "and people are going to take my paper because of that. I'm going to make my paper so widely read that you'll have to buy space in its columns. And if you want to boycott, I'll fill up the columns with Portland advertising." Portland is 90 miles from The Dalles, not far in days of motor transportation.
There was no boycott. Trouble over this sort of thing has been minor since then, and the print-the-news policy has been maintained.
The Chronicle, through almost all its life an evening paper, was morning paper for a few weeks in 1908. When the stockholders fired Miller, they hired G. W. Willis to clean out the office, with the exception of young Litfin, and bring in a competent crew. Willis turned the Chronicle into a morning paper. Litfin, who had been made night foreman, thought he saw weaknesses in Willis's conduct of the paper. He protested to the stockholders, threatening to leave if not heeded. The upshot was, that Miller came back and restored the evening schedule, which has not since been interrupted.
Ben Litfin has a flair for politics. He is a state committeeman for the Republican party in Wasco county but will not himself run for office. He has been president of The Dalles Chamber of Commerce, a director of the Oregon State Editorial Association. When he can get away from the office, he shoots rather an effective game of golf.
Dufur.—In a recent check-up (1933) the publishers of the Dufur Dispatch calculated that the paper had changed hands 18 times since its first number appeared as Dufur's first newspaper, December 12, 1891. This ought to be some sort of a record, but it probably isn't in a country whose pioneer newspaper men were both mobile and impecunious on the average.
Ayer's directory makes a note of a Dufur Democrat, a Satur day weekly published by the Democratic Publishing Company, in 1890; but it failed to last and nobody seems to remember it.63 There have been, incidentally, more owners of the Dispatch than
