Wood River times. [volume] (Hailey, Idaho) 1882-1915, 1884-07-25
THE LONG.FELT WANT.
Bill Nye's Experience in Toying with a
Daily Paper.

Bill Nye in Detroit Free rress
Robert J. Burdett, having related
his experience with young and strug-
Cling daily, l move that other breth-
rem present relate their own little his.
tory. l think it is sometimes relief
to unburden the soul by confession.
| toyed with daily once which was
incorporated to fill a long felt want
l did not know it was loaded. There
was rival daily that had been run
ming two years, and we entered the
arena, hoping to win all easy victory
over this paper and become a great
power in the West. We made it our
business to boom everything that was
boomable and to sheer at the lack of
enterprise of our adversary. We got
specials by mail. press reports by slow
freight, and showed style of fearless
enterprise that was the envy and the
admiration of many large metropolitan
journals. We thought that our ad-
versary wouldn't last more than a
month after election, but Thanksgiv-
ing came and found the Evening
Squawker still on deck. The editor
would come and borrow print paper
OF us and use it to call us the slime
bedecked and putrid exponent of a
still more bane!ul political faction.
We would borrow a font Of BREWER
of him and characterize his paper as
the wailing founding, dying in the
poisonous vapors of the deadly swamp
Of political filth, wherein it had chosen
its bed, edited by the bitter foe of the
laundress and Lirdley Murray, a man
who had evaded justice for forty
years, and, not content with the out.
rage OF all moral sense, had declared
war on the spelling book.
Thus we kept up Il spirited contest
for long time. Sometimes we
couldn't get our paper out the freight
Office and sometimes he couldn't, but
we would loan each other the last quire
we had and keep friendly, While
through the columns of our respective
papers we spoke Of each other in lam
guagc which might have been con-
s.~Nrd as reproachful to some people.
1t was an exciting time. One day
The Squa would offend subscri-
Der, and he would come over to US, and
the next day we would unwittingly
tread on the toes Of one of our great
army of subscribers, aud he would go
over to the enemy.
The editor Of the other paper and
myself saw that it was going to be war
OF determination. We ground our
teeth and our shears and sailed in. At
the end Of the first year he had dis
charged his servant girl and my paper
owed me $500 salary. At the end of
the second year he had blown in his
fine brick residence and | had taken
my salary as police justice and thrown
it into the rapacious NAV OF my little
hungry long felt want.
One day the little, measly, long
suffering features Of The Evening
Squawhvr failed to appear. We KEEP,
asking the office boy why the
Squawker didn't come. Finally he
went to the publication Office. The
door was locked. n map of Dakota
was hung over one window and
printers towel over the other. The
office boy raised the map and stole in.
The uncertain Ii yht here and there
broke in Struggling rays through |
the threadbare places in the towel.
On the desk lay letter from the adj.
vertiser OF the Collie Eraser in which |
he offered to take a cola.nn in the
Squawker year, following pure
r>a ling matter and with ?,O0O lines of
reading notices to lie strung along
through editorials from day to day, in
hold-faced type, and in consideration
therefor TO furnish for two years to
the editor, or his order, 80 bottles of
The Collie Eraser at publishers prices,
delivered on board the cars.
Everything about the office showed
that the work had been going bravelv
on when the summons came. In fact
the summons lay there on the desk
among other papers, along with writ
Of attachment for S253S5. This
shows what hold a paper gets on us
and also what a hold the
subscriber gets on the paper. The
Sheriff had been a subscriber to the
ever since it started, but We
didn't know his attachment tor the
paper was so great.
We won the day, but at what
sacrifice. The smoke of conflict
cleared away and showed that the
victory was not worthy of the carnage.
We had survived but were not proud.
The Squawker had fought us bravely,
and now its still, cod torn lay il. tie
basement of the chief creditor, and
the usual notice Of attachment was
tackled on the door.
The editor and myself me. on the