CHAPTER 11
Vivid Editors of the 50’s
if they were the mere social amenities of the day.
W. C. WOODWARD.
A half dozen editorials have been selected for this chapter, from as many different leading pioneer Oregon papers and by prominent editors of the period. The topics are varied, some of them advisedly chosen from non-controversial fields to show the editors in their more amiable moods as well as in their fiercer aspects of attack or rebuttal.
The editorials have been taken from issues of the following papers published in the period from February 6, 1851, to September 26, 1857: The Western Star, Milwaukie; The Oregon Statesman, Oregon City; The Oregonian, Portland; The Democratic Standard, Oregon City; The Oregon Argus, Oregon City; and the Oregon Weekly Times, Portland. The editorial authors of the selections were respectively John O. Waterman, Asahel Bush, T. J. Dryer, Alonzo Leland, W. L. Adams and E. C. Hibben.
Of three of these editors and their far from gentle way of referring to each other, Professor George Turnbull of the University of Oregon school of journalism has said: “It would probably be libelous in this day to print many of the little exchanges indulged in by Bush, Dryer and Adams; and others of this early group were not far behind these three in vitriolic vehemence.”
It was the kind of journalism characterized in the next decade by Harrison R. Kincaid of the State Jour-
