The Minnesota fiery cross. (St. Paul, Minn.) 1924-19??, 1924-02-29

ington day, a Valentine day and a
grounding day. For a short month
it has great anniversary days for our
country. But there is room for one
which has been overlooked for half
a century.
Ours is not much of an anniver-
sary day when compared with the
others but it has concerned this
writer nightly. Fifty years ago we
commenced newspapering, and said
"Good Morning Good Friends" to a
few hundred readers. in the Cedar
Valley, mostly in Chickasaw county,
having bought the Nashua Post that
week, and our first number was dated
Feb. Ia, 1874.
We had learned before then that
we were good for nothing else, so
we reasoned that maybe we might
be good at newspapering.
Began without Experience.
We commenced newspapering with
out business experience of any kind.
We knew nothing about the me-
chanical department of newspaper
office, and when we undertook to
write we were in the same fix, or
more so. We were woefully green
and clumsy at whatever we under
took to do. We came into newspap-
ering about the same time that the
grasshoppers and the chinch bugs
came into the Iowa wheat fields.
Hope we will not be remembered the
way those hopper and bug years are
remembered by some of the old set
tiers.
We owned and made the Nashua
Post, such as it was, for nearly IL
years. During those years we were
once arrested, charged with criminal
libel. Another time we were sued
for damages by fellow who thought
we owed him $1,000 because, he said,
we had lied about him, when we
published that he turned his wife
out of doors when he was drunk. The
Judge and juries before whom our
cases were tried didn't see it the
same way as our prosecutors saw it.
And so we were not mulcted nor
jailed nor shot.
During those hopper and bug
years, we took most anything on
subscription, such as squashes, prai-
rie chickens, sled length wood, old
rails and soft soap.
To Waveriy i'm 1890.
In 1890 we bought the Bremen
County Independent. We came
down several times to look the
ground over before we bought. One
day we walked down town from the
Illinois Central station with a man
who was then in business on the
west side. We told him that we
thought of buying The Independent,
and asked him what he thought OF
it. He told US frankly, without hesi-
tating, that there was no field nor
excuse nor room for us in Waverly
with the Independent, because that
paper was a dead corpse already and
that it ought to have been decently
inferred long ago. Evidently the re-
cord and reputation we had made in
Chickasaw county had reached Wav-
erly ahead of US.
And so, we proceeded to make
room for The Independent in Wav-
erly, as we'll as for our interesting
family.
During our first five years with
The Independent we got cold feet
many times. There were too many
newspapers here. But all the time
we thought The Independent was not
the "too many" We gained little
all the time, but during the first 10
years here the gain was so small 1t
could hardly be seen with the naked
eye. Those 10 years were as great
an affliction, for this writer, as the
hoppers and bugs of the early 7Os.
Many Ups and Downs.
During these so years we have
tussled with all kinds of problems,
great and small. We have encoun-
tered some awfully treacherous and
soggy roads, sometimes afoot and
alone, sometimes with the OK team
and the lumber wagon. And lately
we have been dumped by that some
times-balky modern contraption, the
gas chariot. Getting stuck in the
mud is a luxury compared with a
dump from one of those chariots
when two Of them going in opposite
directions at speed Of 40 miles an
hour meet on the same track.
And yet, with it all, newspapering
is a great game. We don't know
where or how we could have found
more fun and hard work. Newspap-
ering and the public school are the
two greatest games in this country.
And Old Glory shall wave thou
sand years.
Consolidation In 1915.
In January, 1915, we bought the
Waverly Republican Of Will Tyrell
and paid him his price. aside from
that the transaction was an uncondi-