C. W. DOWNEY

A NEWSPAPER MAN

"Who's who?" May we never overlook that splendid galaxy of self-sacrificing individuals who deny themselves many privileges to make reports of public functions, who record the personal deeds of their respective communities, who visit the sick and paint scenes of the dying, who devote columns to weddings and pages to politics, who mould the opinions of readers and shape the destiny of our commonwealth,--the newspaper men of our state.

Conspicuous in this class of laborers and public benefactors is Clauson W. Downey, city editor of the "Mitchell Daily Republican." Here is a man who for eighteen years and six months has stood at his post of duty, with only two vacations of ten days each, nine years apart. Before making the following assertion, we have carefully gone into, and made a comparison of, the various newspapers of the state, and we have fortified ourselves with the evidence, that during the past eighteen years he has written approximately six times as much matter as any other editor in the state. Until less than a year ago he did all of the writing for the Mitchell Daily, both city and editorial, furnishing on an average six full columns a day; some days furnishing eight columns, and he has gone as high as ten. In addition to all of this he has mostly done his own proof-reading; has gathered nearly all of the news himself, acted as special advertising solicitor for his employers, helped to set type when needed, and done many other details peculiar to the printing business. Talk about a strenuous life—there are others besides Teddy.

Editor Downey's life, from early childhood has not been as "downy " as others we have known. Born in Atlanta, Illinois, November 15, 1862, he came into this world as a little "sucker." His early experiences were the common lot of most boys. In 1879 he graduated from the high school of his native town.

Some editors are newspaper men by birth—that is, through heredity, others become printers through choice, necessity or environment; Downey entered the profession through natural instinct. Late in the afternoon of December 5, 1879, six months after his graduation, while standing in the print shop of the "Atlanta Argus," trying to gratify or to satisfy his smell for printer's ink, young Downey was accosted by the editor of the paper, George L. Shoals, who asked why he did not learn the printer's trade. "That's just what I want to do," snapped out the lad; "can you help me?" "Sure!" said Shoals, "pull off your coat, roll up your sleeves, and start right in." Young Downey did not do like other boys nowadays, pipe out the question, "How much are you willing to pay me?" He belonged to the "old school" that believed a trade was the foundation for success in life and that one would have to be learned, even if it were necessary to be bound out, like Ben FranIin, as an apprentice lad.

C. W. DOWNEY

The boy was soon into it. He was set to work with a huge hand-roller, inking forms on an old Washington press. Did you ever try it? There are some things in newspaperdom to this day that make one's "back ache," but nothing like lifting and pushing and pulling an old-fashioned hand inker. Nothing was said about wages. Our youngster was thinking about learning a trade—about becoming a printer— of becoming independent when finally placed on his own resources. Wages? Nonsense! Lucky he did not have to pay for the privilege.

Saturday night came. The boy marched up and got paid—$1.50 per week. Think of it! Thirty-one years ago; getting $1.50 per week for such drudgery. There isn't a lad on the continent today who would do it for a cent less than $1.50 per day (and yet some people enjoy voting the democratic ticket.)

Well, our boy inked himself as well as the type; he blistered his hands and posed and imposed upon his legs; but he stuck to it for an entire year until he was relieved by another "sucker," and promoted to the type case. Here he worked for three years, setting up forms.

He was now of age. Manhood gave birth to new ambitions. Dependence gave way into independence; and the responsibilities of life made the man impatient to earn more money than the boy. He quit the printing business and struck out into the field of telegraphy. One year was enough. The earliest impressions make the most ineffaceable record. A printer once—a printer always.

The young fellow got the western fever; he struck for Dakota, and landed at Northville, a few stations south of Aberdeen, on the Northwestern railroad, in the spring of 1883. At that time Northville was about as bleak as the region around the north pole if Cook and Peary tell the truth.) There wasn't even a roadway up main street. Here our young printer got hold of an old press, got some space in a breezy board shack, started a newspaper which he called the "Northville Advance," and began to earn a livelihood publishing mostly Notices of Final Proof. Editor Downey harvested his crop of "final proofs" at "harvest" time, sold out the paper, returned to Atlanta, Illinois, and took up his old job on the "Atlanta Argus."

Another year at the old stand and our ambitious printer, as is customary with a large proportion of his profession, made a break for Chicago. Here he found employment in the job printing room of Culver, Page, Hoyne & Co. (afterwards known as the John Morris Printing Co.), and remained with them for nearly three years.

Late in 1886, he got the Dakota fever again. Back he came; went opposite Northville to the town of Ashton on the Milwaukee railroad; bought the "Ashton Leader," which was badly run down, began to build it up, jumped into a red-hot county-seat fight; forced to the wall a competing newspaper in the same town; got the field to himself; bought $1,000 worth of new equipment for his own print shop; and was doing fine until—until—all of a sudden, it ceased to rain.

None of us who weathered through the dry years of 1889 and 1890 in Dakota, will ever forget them. Hot! One pioneer, in Faulk county swore he had to shrink hoops onto his hogs to make them hold swill. Another sturdy pioneer addressing an old settler's picnic in Beadle county, a few years since, had just declared with considerable emphasis that he had to feed his hens cracked ice to keep them from laying boiled eggs, when he was interrupted by a rugged, sun-burned gentleman in the audience, who had passed through the same ordeal, with the query, "Where in hell did you get the ice?"

Hot! The creeks and lakes all dried up; birds lying dead by thousands along the roadsides and in the old-lake beds; snakes by the half million in the small pools that were left; horses dropping dead everywhere in the fields; roadways along the railroads white from early morning until late at night with one continuous chain of covered immigrant wagons—people driving out of the dreadful place, taking with them everything— except their land which would not produce the taxes.

Hot! The buffalo grass was dry as gun powder. How the great fires used to sweep down from the northwest, driven at from forty to seventy miles an hour by the awful winds; before them, vast droves of fleeing, hungry wolves, jack-rabbits, and other wild animals; behind them, dead bodies burned to crisps, remnants of charred homes, an endless black veil, desolation.

Cold! The winters were the opposite extreme. How well we all remember the "big blizzard" of '88. What a dismal task for the ensuing week, going over great snow banks hither and thither, hunting for burial the hundreds that perished in that awful storm, before the surviving wolves should devour them. Will any of us ever forget it?

This digression, and the incorporation herein of the misfortunes of the latter '80's., is made intentionally, to show that any man in buisness who might fail in times like these is not to blame. Editor Downey was in the newspaper business. Business men could not afford to advertise. Subscribers could not and would not pay their subscriptions (they dont' always pay, even during good times.) There was not much left at Ashton but "ash"-es. Mr. Downey was forced to pack up his outfit and go south. He stopped in the older portion of the state—the southeast part—and settled at Beresford, where he unpacked his portable print shop, established the "Beresford Sentinel," and got out the first issue of the paper, in December, 1890.

This plucky chap knew that "all things good come to them that wait." He decided to "stick." In the midst of all this adversity, he took unto himself a bride.

"Foolish man," you say. No; not at all. Some wives are a burden, some are not. Mrs. Downey at once learned the typecase, took her place in the print shop, helped her young husband, and thereby saved the expense of a hired man.

At the end of six months he sold the "Sentinel;" he and his wife traveled around for a few months, looking for a suitable location, and finally settled in Mitchell in 1891, where Mr. Downey accepted a position as foreman in the newsroom of the "Mitchell Daily Republican." In May, 1892, the company made him city editor and when the prolific Ralph Wheelock sold his interest in the plant in 1895, Mr. Downey not only succeeded him as editor of the paper but kept up the local work as well, thereby shouldering the responsibility which two men had previously carried.

It will thus be seen that Mr. Downey is not only an editor, but an all-round printer as well. This experience makes his services valuable to his employers. During the printers' strike in 1905 when the entire force of the Mitchell Printing Co. walked out of the office one Monday morning, Editor Downey, for two days, wrote all of the news, set it up, proof-read his own work, ran the press. and did a large part of the job work. For three days more, after some non-union help had arrived, he made up the forms, in addition to his other work.

Again, on top of all these other anxieties, Editor Downey has for the past fifteen years corresponded for nine outside daily newspapers, and he has placed Mitchell on the foreign map as well. Each year he sends a four-page article with illustrations of the Corn Palace at Mithell, to the "World-Wide Magazine," and other material to the metropolitan press.

TWO CLASSES OF EDITORS

With editors, as with other people, there are but two general classes—pessimists and optimists. The former curse their race, the latter bless it. With what brotherly pity we all remember the fate of a former newspaper man who lived in south-central South Dakota: how he left his home town, after a residence therein of some nine years, friendless; how he established himself in another nearby town and after a residence there of some ten or eleven years, left for another city not far away, and what a public jollification meeting was held by his townsmen when he left; how at the third place he abused every single man in the community, supposing foolishly that by exposing to the entire neighborhood the sins of each man (either imaginary or real), he was purifying society, how he was finally tried for libel, sold his plant at a low figure and left the state. What was wrong? Nothing; only his every thought was festooned in moral garlic.

"There is so much good in the worst of us, and so much bad in the best of us, that it ill-behooves any of us to talk about the rest of us."

Another writer saw it in this light:

May we implore forgiveness in advance for incorporating herein a tiny poem of our own? It hits on the head the nail which we are trying to drive:

Mr. Downey belongs to the other class (optimists). He sees only the good in his fellow townsmen. He lives to bless his community. It is safe to say there is no more cheerful newspaper in South Dakota than the "Mitchelll Daily Republican." Why? Because its editor is cheerful. The severest test of an editor's work is not in finding something interesting to write (there are hundreds of new things of interest coming up every day), but in know what NOT to write. Editor Downey has gained this knowledge.