Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/491

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482
HISTORY OF OREGON NEWSPAPERS

preciated by those who knew this debonair figure, so active and picturesque that he seemed almost like a story-book journalist:

Editor Fowler, of the only great paper of Wenatchee, Wash., (so went the story under Pease's by-line) has quite a striking letterhead for his business correspondence paper. It pictures a section of orchard, hanging fruit, and bears the legend

"Land of the Big Red Apple,
Where Dollars Grow on Trees.

Away back East lives a man who considers himself a creditor of Editor Fowler, on a long-disputed claim. He once secured one of these letterheads, and, clipping it off, he pasted it on a sheet, on which he wrote: "Please shake a tree for me.

In due time he received a small package from Fowler. Opening it he found a single apple-seed and the following note from the editor: "Dear Sir: I have no time to shake the tree for you, but I herewith enclose a seed from its fruit. Plant it, let it grow, and then shake the tree for yourself. Yours truly, Fowler."

There was also running a column headed "Short Talks with Travelers." This was a forerunner of the hotel column later handled by John W. Kelly and conducted by Fred Lockley on the Journal for so many years. This interesting feature has now passed from virtually all metropolitan papers.

The policy of burying the news on the back page was to be changed, and the telegraph news was ultimately to get more space than was available in the whole Sunday paper in 1881. Glance at your current Sunday paper and notice the many contrasts.

The Sunday Oregon Journal, which started in 1904, almost exactly two years after the daily and close to a year and a half after C. S. Jackson had acquired the paper, evolved pretty much as had the Sunday Oregonian, which had been launched 23 years before.

The Journal crashed into the Sunday field with a wide array of feature matter, both local and syndicate, and from time to time the paper reported an excellent reception given their Sunday effort.

One of the early "Sunday" papers published in Oregon was a weekly, issued on Saturday, called Sunday Welcome, started in 1875. The Sunday Welcome was owned by J. F. Atkinson, who had come to Portland in 1867 and started the Evening Bulletin in January 1868. He cut costs on the Bulletin by doing most of the work himself, acting as editor, business manager, and foreman of the composing-room. Atkinson was one of the busiest newspapermen in the his-