Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/469

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460
HISTORY OF OREGON NEWSPAPERS

congregated in Broadway in front of the burning edifices, rushed away with screams which affrighted the whole crowd; but whether anyone has been buried beneath the ruins, we have not yet ascertained.

An efficient police force was in attendance during the fire, who maintained order, and enabled the firemen to per form their arduous duties.

Our reporter was not enabled to learn whether the stores destroyed were insured or not. The Howard Hotel was saved, although the building sustained serious injury. As soon as it was discovered by the inmates of that hotel that the whole building was in no danger of being destroyed, they hastened to bring in their property as expeditiously as they took it out on the first alarm. Many of them being strangers to New York did not know but that the hotel would be wholly destroyed. Besides the store in which the fire originated, the next house, occupied by J. D. Chevalier, on the corner of John street and Broadway, and No. 4 John street, occupied by Mr. Bambridge, engraver.

At the time of our going to press, the flames were nearly subdued and no further damage was apprehended.

The New York Weekly Tribune of May 26, 1860, telling the story of Abraham Lincoln's nomination, put the fact of the nomination in the second division of the heading, under the top line label "The Chicago Convention" and ran the nomination, in which the Tribune's editor, Horace Greeley, had had a prominent part as a proxy delegate from Oregon, buried deep, taking its chronological place under the head of Third Day's Proceedings.

Another example: When Japan, in 1860, sent its first ambassador to the United States (it had been only a few years since Commodore Perry had persuaded Japan to mix with the rest of the world), the Tribune gave nearly two whole pages to the event. The heads were labels, and the whole account was chronological.

Important city business transacted by the New York board of aldermen was regularly run in chronological sequence. For instance, in the Tribune of December 21, 1860, such an article begins with the paragraph:

A regular meeting of the Board of Aldermen was held last evening, President Peck in the chair.

Then, several paragraphs down:

Mr. Boole offered a resolution that a committee of three from the Board of Aldermen, and a committee consisting of the same number from the Board of Councilmen be appointed to confer with a committee from the Board of