business possibilities of the times, and in 1891 the paper was suspended. Not, however, before it had given encouragement and an outlet to many early Oregon writers. A feature of the last days of the West Shore, when Harry L. Wells was editor for Mr. Samuel, was a department edited from Whatcom (now Bellingham), Wash., by Mrs. Ella Higginson, who had started while still in Oregon City a literary career which was to place her in the front rank of western poets and novelists (44). Mrs. Higginson's page, started in 1890, was called "Fact and Fancy for Women." Mr. Samuel, discouraged by the lack of appreciation of his magazine, went into the life insurance business, founding the Oregon Life Insurance Company which yielded him a financial success denied him in journalism.
German-language newspapers in Oregon began with the weekly Oregon Deutsche Zeitung, started by C. A. Landenberger in Portland in 1867 and published by him until its suspension in 1884. Next came the Staats Zeitung, also a Portland paper, established by Dr. J. Folkmann in 1877. For a time he conducted a daily, started in December of the same year. It failed to withstand the competition of Landenberger's paper and was soon suspended. Following suspension of the Deutsche Zeitung, Otterstedt & Sittig established, in March 1885, the Freie Presse. Bruno Sittig was editor in 1889. This paper was succeeded by the Nachrichten, established by A. E. Kern in 1890 and continued on through to the present. St. Joseph's Blatt, weekly, and the Armen Seelen Freund, monthly, Catholic newspapers, have been running at Mount Angel since 1887.
East Portland newspapers, of which there have been several, began with the Weekly Era, which ran but a short time in 1871. The founders were Urban E. Hicks and S. W. Ravely. East Portland was then a separate municipality. Hicks, an old-time printer who as foreman of the composing-room taught young Sam Clemens (Mark Twain) to set type in Hannibal, Mo., had published the Union Flag, a campaign paper at Vancouver, Wash., in 1861 and the next year had been for a time city editor of the Oregonian. In 1865 he was with Bellinger and Noltner in the Democratic Review at Salem. The Oregon Herald, Portland, had him as city editor and compositor in 1867-68. After the Era folded up he was for a time (1873-74) compositor on the Evening News, of which C. B. Bellinger was editor. He was the father of Gwin Hicks, who became state printer of Washington in 1897.
Other East Portland papers (45) were the Vindicator and the Democratic Era. The present Portland News was started there many years afterward, but that is another story, told later in this volume.
In March 1882 Nat L. Baker started the Evening Post but soon discontinued it for the usual reason.
The next year the Oregonian faced the strongest competition it had had for years. This was the Northwest News, started January
