The Hood River Glacier, Hood River, OR., June 12, 1913, page 3
MR. BLYTHE TELLS OF EARLY GLACIER DAYS
Solicited by Mr. Thomison to give a sketch of the early
history of the Glacier, I will attempt to tell what I know about its start
and struggles for existence up to the time it was purchased by Mr. Moe, the
present publisher.
Along about the year 1888 Geo. T. Prather conceived the
idea that Hood River was entitled to have a newspaper to let the world know
of its wonderful resources, then lying dormant, and of its ambitious citizens,
also more or less in a state of dormancy. Knowing me to be a printer (I then
held cases on a Portland paper, where I worked during the summer months and
spent the winter with my family at Hood River) he asked me to join him and
start a paper. Our conversation was held in front of Geo. P. Crowell's store.
E.L. Smith and some others were present. Mr. Smith pulled a shiny twenty-dollar
gold piece from his pocket and offered it as a starter if we would start
a newspaper. The late S.G. LaFrance, I think, offered to do as well. The
shiny gold pieces were tempting, but having had some experience in starting
and publishing newspapers before that day, and considering that the sparse
population of the town and valley, I knew something of the cost and hard
work of getting out even a country paper. By next spring, in 1889, Mr. Prather
could resist no longer in his strong desire to give Hood River a newspaper.
He went to work, soliciting subscriptions for three months, at 50 cents,
for a Hood River paper. People of the town and valley responded liberally.
Everybody could afford to put up four bits to have a home paper. J.H. Cradlebaugh
was then publishing the Wasco County Sun at The Dalles. Mr. Prather made
arrangements with Cradlebaugh to print the paper and mail it to subscribers
for three months. I never heard Mr. Prather say how we came out on the venture,
but at the end of three months he was willing to give the paper over to Mr.
Cradlebaugh, who bought a hand press and type, purchased lot at Third and
Oak streets, set up his press and began the publication of a real home paper
that has never missed a publication date from that date to the present. Mr.
Cradlebaugh named the paper at its start, when published in The Dalles, and
gave it its motto: "The Hood River Glacier -- It's a Cold Day When We Get
Left." Mr. Cradlebaugh run the paper, with the help of his wife who was a
compositor, for five years. Being a lawyer he managed with his legal practice
and the revenue from the paper to make a living. For a while he had a good
run on of land notices. But in 1894, when the real hard times for Hood River
came, caused by the loss of the strawberry crop on account of the big flood
in the Columbia destroying the railroad, he found it impossible to meet his
expenses out of the Glacier and the slim legal practice at the time. He went
to The Dalles and engaged to edit the Daily Chronicle, leaving his wife to
manage the Glacier. It was at this time, July 7, 1894, he gave me liberal
terms to purchase the Glacier. To sell the plant and goodwill to anyone outside
of Hood River at that time was entirely out of the question.
During the last year of Mr. Cradlebaugh's ownership of
the Glacier it was my pleasure to be his hired man and set most of the type
for the paper. He is a ready writer, and since his work on the Glacier he
has acquired fame from his literary productions. He never was known, while
editing the Glacier, to have a line of copy ready for the compositor before
the hour arrived for the compositor to go to work. I would walk in from my
ranch to go to work at the case of 8 o'clock the day before publication day.
Cradlebaugh would be in his house, probably at a breakfast. He would go to
the print shop, next door, start a fire, light his pipe, and then his pencil
would fly, making a copy for the compositor. Items occurring during the week
he had gathered in his head. Getting copy enough ahead to keep me busy for
an hour or to he would start in to spin yarns. Listening to jokes and stories
told by John Cradlebaugh makes a person glad he is alive. My intimate
acquaintance with him must have added ten years to my life. And what a bunch
of copy he could turn out when he set himself to it. When enough type had
been set to fill the paper, or the time had come to go to press, the copy
hook was emptied into the waste basket. Some of his best productions, as
he said himself, had to go that way.
To file a writer like a John Cradlebaugh, as editor of
the Glacier, was a serious undertaking for me. If I didn't purchase the plant
he threatened to box it up, send it back to the type foundry and let it go
at half price. Right then and there my local prided loomed up equal to that
of Geo. T. Prather. It would never do to let the light of the Hood River
Glacier die out and plunge to the town and valley again into the darkness
of the Middle Ages. So I made the purchase by giving my note. Cradlebaugh
was owing me near a hundred dollars for labor, which fact probably helped
me to make up my mind to purchase, fearing that I might always have something
coming to me. I went to my ranch home feeling rather sheepish brothers and
guilty as I told my wife what I had done. She tried, I think, to console
me by saying something about a white elephant. I found my boy sick in bed
and had to hike back to town that Saturday evening for the doctor. Doctor
Brosius came and said there were symptoms of typhoid. Monday morning I went
to the office, cleaned up the pi, hustled around for items, wrote them up,
set them in type and got out the paper on time for that week. I was farming
that year, and besides getting out the paper all alone that week, I walked
home for my meals at noon to see how my boy was getting along. Had three
cows to milk evenings and mornings and attended my crops when necessary.
Henry York pulled the Arm-strong press for me that first week, while I did
the rolling act. My boy was better the next week and did the printer's devil
share by inking the forms for me.
Business houses in Hood River at that time were scarce,
and those we had did know how to advertise. Cradlebaugh had no home ads from
business houses, but had some good ads from The Dalles. The second week after
taking charge I found time to interview the home merchants for advertising.
Geo. P. Crowell was the leading merchant. He gave me a three inch add at
$1.50 a month. That $1.50 ad run without change for the ten years the Glacier
with under my management. Others who gave me small ads, "just to help along
the paper," were T.C. Dallas, A.S. Blowers & Co., M.H. Nickelsen, Williams
& Brosius, Hanna & Wolfard, O.B. Hartley and S.E. Bartmess. Together
I got home advertising patronage that amounted to the magnificent sum of
$13 a month! Those were the days when Hood River was really hard up. How
the merchants lived and how the farmer existed during that period of hard
times was almost a mystery. Not a subscription came in for two months after
I took charge. Captain Judd Ferguson was the first subscriber to pay his
subscription. He gave me two dollars, with the then a price of the paper.
He had hardly left the office until a neighbor woman came in with a hard-luck
story of how were children were without shoes and for that reason could not
go to school. Thinking, no doubt, that I had the only paying business in
town, she struck me for the loan of $10, to be paid when her strawberries
came in the next year, provided we did have another flood in the Columbia.
I assured her business was not very good with me, but it was picking up,
was very sorry I didn't have as much as $10, but cheerfully gave her the
two dollars. For two years the Glacier never got a land notice. Fortunately
my expenses were about as light as any country paper that ever existed. For
the first year I got rent free. My patent outside cost $1.60 a week and a
few cents for postage on the papers mailed, made up my necessary expenditures.
I did all the work on the paper with the assistance of my boy on publication
days, and kept building so for five years, during which time my gross revenue
receipts averaged $50 a month. The second year T.C. Dallas built the Glacier
an office across the street from where the Glacier had been located by John
Cradlebaugh. After the building was finished and I had moved in I asked Mr.
Dallas how much rent he was going to charge me. He said: "Well, Uncle Sammy,
do you think you can stand $5 a month?" I thought I could. About this time
the price of the Glacier was reduced to $1.50 a year. At the end of five
years the first irrigating ditch in the valley was completed and then good
times for Hood River came along. It wasn't too long until the circulation
of the Glacier got too big for the old Washington hand press and a Country
Campbell power press was installed. This necessitated an extension of the
building. Mr. Dallas cheerfully put up the addition. When the new press was
set up in the new building I again asked Mr. Dallas what the rent would be.
In his good natured drawl he replied, "Well, Uncle Sammy, do you think you
can stand $9 a month?" I told him I could stand $10, and $10 it was up till
the time I sold to Mr. Moe. Hood River never had a better citizen than Theodore
Dallas. Open hearted, hard working, always cheerful, his tragic death was
mourned by all who knew him. Bless his memory! Old timers will never forget
him.
The setting up of the power press caused an unlooked
for difficulty in getting the machine to do the work. It was geared to run
by hand as well as by other power. To find a man stout enough to run off
the whole edition was not always an easy matter. We could never get a man
to do the job a second time. One day, while hunting a man to run the press,
W.M. Stewart, the hardware merchant, overheard me making inquiries. He was
at that time temporarily out of business and was taking a day off from his
vocation of outdoing Isaac Walton. Mr. Stewart volunteered to help me out
and turned the press for the whole edition for the $1.50 I paid for the work
each week. Mr. Stewart has held my good opinion ever since. About this time
Joe Wilson came to my assistance when assistance was badly needed. He told
me how I could get a water motor to do the work and immediately he sent to
California and before long we had the motor installed. With what pride and
a broad grin did D.N. Byerlee feed the old Country Campbell press after the
motor was installed! He would turn on the power till the old press would
bump and grind and wake people on the street to the fact that there was something
doing in the Glacier office. During the last five years of my management
of the Glacier the business was good. Though no great wealth was accumulated,
I was well enough paid for the hard work I put in for the first five years.
I never solicited an ad after the first month. I discovered years before
that I was no ad man. But on subscriptions I was more successful. After I
had run the paper for one month I went to The Dalles to collect for the
advertising then in the Glacier. Every Dalles ad was ordered out. The merchants
said they found it didn't pay to advertise in the Glacier. But there came
a time when they thought it might pay. When times got to booming in Hood
River I got an order from a big store in The Dalles to run a half page ad
one time, without asking the price. At the same time they said they would
give me about a 12-inch ad to run in a certain space for a year, to be changed
once a month, and asked my rates. I replied by giving them a price of $75
for the half page ad one time and $100 a month for the 12-inch ad. They never
came back but they got their big ad in the semi-weekly Chronicle and sent
the paper free for three months to any name that they could learn in Hood
River. Dead men's names were on their list. Postmaster Yates showed me a
stack of Dalles Chronicles as big as his head that had been sent to persons
who refused to take the paper from the post office.
For my ten years' connection with the Glacier I have
nothing to regret. In fact I look back with pleasure to those old days when
I knew nearly every person in Hood River and made a lasting friendships with
the old timers. Looking back and remembering the old time citizens of Hood
River, some of whom are still with us, we can recognize their sturdiness
of character, their cheerfulness under adverse circumstances, their help
in building Hood River to what it is today.
May 5, 1904. I disposed of the Glacier to A.D. Moe. Under
his management it has gone ahead with leaps and bounds and taken front rank
with the country publications of the state of Oregon. From the little sheet
started by Geo. T. Prather it has grown to mammoth proportions and become
an institution of the town and valley of which we can all be proud. May it
continue so that, like its name sake on the mountain, "it will be a cold
day it when it gets left."
Sam F. Blythe.
Hood River, June 3, 1913
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© Jeffrey L. Elmer