modate, I shall defer advertising until fall, by which time we shall have better boarding accommodations."
Meanwhile, Bush had not strained himself boosting any of the others. To his patron Thurston, December 20, 1850, he wrote:
I hope you will write to your particular friends all about the territory by return of mail, to do all they can for the Statesman. It will start under very unfavorable auspices. Everybody is so impatient, and there is so much competition. . . . Some of the papers must die. I predict that in less than two years from this time printing establishments can be bought cheaper in Oregon than in New York.
The enemies of the Statesman are constantly reporting that the paper is to be abandoned, and the lapse of time since it was promised gives the report credit. You don't know how we are suffering from the delay.
Let us close the circuit of correspondence with a reference to the friendly letter written by Henry Russell from New York, August 24, 1851, to Bush.
Printers (he wrote) say your paper looks like civilization, in contradistinction to the Oregonian and Spectator. . . Again, per agreement, I say Thurston, were he living would now be owing me $300—as he forwarded but $100—to my wife.
I see that you handle the trio (Oregonian, Spectator, and Star) with much tact as I had anticipated. So far as I am personally concerned, I feel that you have made all the defense of my acts in Oregon that the case demanded. . . For the manner of the notice, and the articles themselves, I thank you. Had circumstances permitted, I am satisfied I should at least have been content with the arrangement we agreed upon for mutually carrying on the Statesman. Your idea of getting rid of Blain, I believe now more than ever, was the part of wisdom.
My wife and boy are here, happy and contented, I believe, yet could they have gone to Oregon when I did, I doubt not we all could have been as comfortable as we now are and no more so. It was for their comfort I returned here, and I have not regretted it. . . From your friend and wellwisher, Henry Russell.
There was a bit of a race between the Oregonian and Statesman to get going first. Bush, in one of his letters from Oregon City to Thurston, told him of the Whig press established at Portland and urged the importance of getting the Democratic paper under way at the earliest possible moment. The letter was dated December 5, 1850.
