NEWSPAPERS OF WASHINGTON TERRITORY
As the Americans began that march across the continent, that westward movement, which developed into the greatest colonizing experience of modern history, the newspaper not only helped to point the way but also sent out numerous brave children to help in the struggle and to encourage the pioneer home builders, keeping pace with the frontier as soon as the new homes clustered into village or town.
In an expanding democracy, such as was the United States in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the frontier newspaper rendered various kinds of service, many of them essential to the peculiar genius of the American form of government. There were the purley social forms of service in recording the goings and comings of people, the calls for meetings, the uniting of efforts for good causes and betterments. The editor flaunted a pennant of pride or pointed a finger of scorn and the struggling community renewed the faith that its attack upon elemental forces was not in vain. Those papers rendered economic service by exploiting natural resources and by suggesting or encouraging new enterprises. They rendered political service by advocating candidates, parties, platforms, reforms and needed laws. All these services might easily be rendered by newspapers in new lands of any country. Another kind of essential service by the American frontier newspaper had to do with the American land system. In passing the huge public domain of lands into the possesion of the settlers, one essential was the publication of notices of the land claims. On the other hand, the fees for such publications often constituted the main support of the frontier papers. This kind of mutuality of service has led the advance of the American people and the American newspaper. It began on the frontier; it continues in the later metropolis.
As Washington Territory was one of the last of the American frontiers, it is natural that the frontier newspaper service should be found here in the fulness of flower in the two-score years from 1850 to 1890. Some men live longer and serve their fellows longer than do others. So has it been with the newspapers. Every
(181)
