paper, still a weekly. The partners purchased the paper May 9, 1887, and made it a daily under the name of the Morning Democrat.
In 1893 (119) the Democrat had a steam Cottrell rotary press and a complete plant valued at about $10,000, employed 12 persons in the mechanical department, running a day and a night force. The weekly circulation was about 2500. The daily reported about 1200.
Competition entered the field in 1873 with the establishment of the Herald, also Democratic, by R. B. Boyd & Co. When the Herald, issued Wednesday, was purchased in 1876, the Democrat had the field to itself for about five years. The Herald ran Democratic for two years, then in 1875, with W. S. James as editor, switched over to the Republicans. Even this move failed to save it, however, and it was dead within the year. The paper was listed in Ayer's as co-operative, one of the first in Oregon.
In 1874 the Democrat defied its competition with the announcement, in Ayer's Directory, that "it is the old, reliable, and wellestablished Democratic paper and has a larger paying circulation list than any other two papers published in eastern Oregon; it is the state official paper for Baker and Grant counties."
M. H. Abbott, who had retired from the Democrat in 1872, was back in the field October 20, 1880, with a competing paper, the Baker County Reveille, issued weekly on Wednesday by himself and sons, with Morris D. Abbott editor. The issue of July 6, 1887 (v. 7, no. 40) announced the editor's death. The paper, Democratic, changed publication days twice (to Friday, then to Wednesday), and in 1889 became an evening publication issued every day except Sunday, with a weekly in connection. It was suspended in 1891.
It was while J. M. Shepherd & Co. were publishing the Democrat that (in 1878) the world was told, through Pettengill's News paper Directory for that year, that "the county is fast settling up with an unexceptional class of people." Perhaps the descendants of Baker's enterprising pioneers would regard this compliment that missed fire as exceptionable.
The Baker Herald, for many years a prosperous evening newspaper with Republican leanings, had its origin in a Populist news paper of the early 90's. When the Enquirer was burned out, in 1892, it was followed by another paper of similar politics, christened the Epigram by its founders, John F. Foster and L. C. Bell, son of J. R. N. Bell, of Roseburg and Corvallis, in 1893. It was a fourpage paper, 15×22. Issued Mondays and Thursdays, it claimed 500 circulation at $2 a year. It was soon changed to a Saturday weekly. In 1900 the title had become the Herald, an independent paper, H. F Cassidy editor. The next year the Herald was sold to E. P. Dodd of the Pendleton Tribune, who made it an evening (except Sunday) daily with a weekly edition. He used to spend three days a week in Baker and three in Pendleton.
