New Ulm review. (New Ulm, Brown County, Minn.) 1892-1961, 1893-03-15
SERVING TWO MASTERS.

What induced Iii, to establish the
Weekly Herald at C:,labash City is
more than l .an say. No one invited
me IT, come, welcomed me when ar
rived. W expressed wish to have me
stay -. K
The place had no newspaper, it is
true, but it seemed to need one. Most
of the population were silver-1niners,
who were SO much under ground as to
he little interested in affairs on the sur:
face, Again; "a large part:of the inhab-
ltants could not read; another large
part did not want to, and 4 majority
of the remainder objected to paying
for the privilege. -. - s sz
Subscribers being so few, you may,
Imagine that advertisers were not, very
plenty. Those l secured insisted on
paying wholly in goods that were
never of use to me. ~-'@ :
One advertiser was a saloOnkeeper-I
never drank Another was a tobacco
nist-I did not smoke. A third was Il
harnessmaker-I had no horse. A
fourth dealt in gunpowder, rend-rock,
dynamite and other explosives-while
L never blew up anything or anybody
in my life excepting fguratively.
Nevertheless managed to live, or at
all events I did not die. At the end of
the first year l had four hundred and
'slXty-eight subscribers, two hundred
and ten Of whom remained such be-
cause never attempted to collect their
bills. A few paid-for Eastern adver-
dsements and some job printing en-
Abled me to keep my head above water
as a general thing. For the rest OF the
time 1 had to hold my breath.
At last I reached such prosperity that
after paying off my one journeyman
on Saturday night, occasionally found
"A dollar OF two left for myself.
Just at this time an opposition paper
was set up!
'"The Calabash City Spy, George
Rowe, editor and proprietor appear
ed in all the glory of secondhand type
mime was third-hand-and grade Of
paper somewhat resembling real
'neWs'-mine did not resemble it at
all. The Spy had brand-new vignette-
head, representing the town as seen
from G"ingo mountain. This utterly
'ec1ipsed my WORKOUT woodcut of the
HOddess of Liberty sitting on Il large
cog-Wheel, surrounded by plows an
chors and steam engines. She held 4
book in one hand, and in the other a
wheat-sheaf which looked so much like
"a birch rod that it gave her the air Of
AN Old-faShioned school ma'am holding
Il session in a machine shop.
Since every person who owed ME a
grudge OF arrears Of subscription i'm
:nediately went over to Rowe, he soon
had pretty large list. In some mys-
FERROUS way he detached several of my
advertisers from their insecure allie
glance, besides obtaining several new
ones among people from whom I had
been unable to get anything.
Rowe was a good-looking, bright,
active, we'll educated young fellow,
with whom I should certainly have
been friendly under different circum-
stances; but this was now quite i'm
possible. Aside from business rivalry,
1T is a part of the business of country
der to satisfy the public's demand for
excitement.
AS subjects of interest are few in a
hamlet like Calabash City, the weekly
contest between the newspapers was
eagerly anticipated by the citizens. and
A peaceful settlement of any dispute
would have been regarded a derclictiOn
OF duty. So we two poor editors con-
tlnued, week after week, to act the
gladiator for a far from Roman popu-
lace, and soon sincerely hated each
other.
How we did quarrel! We quarrcled
about poitics-though we belonged to
the same party-about law, religion
and medicine, about the amount Of sill
yer to the ton in the last cleanup at
~AtuchachO mine, about the distance Of
the earth from the sun. and the dis
fance of Juan Moreno's ranch from the
town plaza-abOut al things terres-
trial subterranean and superterrene.
by practice we grew so expert that
1 really believe Wa could have carried
on a lively discussion about the four
rules Of arithmetic
Rowe had the better OF it ut times,
because he was sharper and wittier
than l. Besides, he had shrewdly ar
ranged to bring out his paper the day
after mine. Thus he could reply to my
attacks at once. while could not come
back at him for a whole week. I
:prided myself on a. lofty. reproving
tone, BETTING the character Of Il long
established journal dealing with an i'm
pertinent interloper
The situation was so absurd. the hos
tility between us so puerile and silly.
that | cannot now conceive how I
could have taken the thing seriously
Yet I became Rowe's enemy as cordi-
ally as if there had been some good
cause for detesting him.
When this war had gone on for sew
eral months, 1 detected j falling off in
the vigor of the Spy. It was as trucu-
lent as ever, but written with Il certain
.1angour. which seemed to show that
Rowe was losing courage. This. OF
course, inspired me to renewed efforts.
and / began to hope that should drive
the foe off the field
One publication day sat down early
to do up the customary batch of ''scat-
"tering exposures and "unanswerable
arraignments'' Of the Spy, when Bud
Haskins, my editorial assistant. COM
position, job printer, mailing clerk and
an-of-all-work. came in, beaming with
JOY. -. ,s7.7.--
Got some good news for you. Mr..
Warren said he, grinning 'Cordin'
TO the way it looks now, there won't
be no Spy this week-pr'aps not mex
Nweek-p'r'aps never
; ...s- -. inquired, much