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HISTORY OF OREGON NEWSPAPERS

had found some indecent articles on crime and an obscene bit headed "Under the Teacups," which violated Oregon law.40 The police suppressed the issue, but, the Oregonian said the next day on page 5, three newsboys managed to get through the police with nearly 100 papers, which they sold at 75 cents to $1 a copy.

In an editorial on the 19th the Oregonian complimented Wood and Hume, saying they had "earned the gratitude of all decent persons. The Mercury has been no worse of late than it has been for years. It might have been suppressed at any time by the employment of the resolution and vigor these gentlemen have shown. The verdict of the jury in Wood's case cleared the way for the vigorous proceedings of Hume last night. Between them they have abolished a publication insidiously demoralizing as well as unspeakably offensive. It is not probable that the Mercury will ever resume publication."



ABIGAIL SCOTT DUNIWAY


The New Northwest was established in May 1871 by Mrs. Abigail Scott Duniway, older sister of Harvey Scott and perhaps the most widely known woman and one of the ablest in the history of Oregon journalism.

Abigail Jane Scott was a real pioneer. She arrived in the Willamette valley in the early fall of 1852, having lost both her mother and a brother by death on the long trip from her native Illinois, where she was born October 22, 1834.

Both her parents, John Tucker Scott and Ann Roelefson Scott, came of sturdy Revolutionary stock, and Mrs. Duniway never lost her own willingness to fight for her political and social ideas.

Married in 1853 to Benjamin Charles Duniway, she spent the next eighteen years mostly on Oregon farms, with intervals in the towns of Lafayette and Albany. It was in 1871 that she began, in Portland, the publication of the New Northwest, a weekly newspaper devoted to equality for women, politically, financially, and socially. The same year saw her first appearance on the lecture platform as an advocate of what were then termed "women's rights." Susan B. Anthony, pioneer in the woman's suffrage movement, had come to the Pacific Coast in 1871 on a lecture tour for her cause, and Mrs. Duniway accompanied this suffrage champion about Oregon and Washington and reluctantly allowed Miss Anthony to persuade her to take the platform herself for an address. She was so well received that she added public speaking to her other means of getting her ideas before the public, and it is as a lecturer that Who's Who in America refers to her in indexing the sketch of her career.