R. Chessman, who had been editor of the Evening Budget. He has been an outstanding Oregon journalist since his graduation from the University of Oregon in 1909. While on the Pendleton East Oregonian, before going to Astoria as editor of the Budget, he achieved a widening repute as a columnist. At Astoria he has won recognition for public service, both through his editorial utterances and his personal work for Astoria through federal departments and bureaus at Washington.
Among the editors who worked on the Astorian besides P. W. Parker, of a pioneer Astoria family, were E. W. Wright, later marine editor of the Oregonian, famed as the author of the Marine History of the Northwest, and J. L. Duffy, characterized by John E. Gratke, old-time Astoria publisher, as the "classic editor" of the Astorian.
Among the reporters were John R. Rathom, later editor of the Providence Journal; John Barrett, who became minister to Siam and the head of the Pan-American Union; Samuel L. Simpson, the "poet laureate" of Oregon.
Simpson, a newspaper man by vocation and a poet by talents and inclination, "takes front rank," as Alfred Powers expressed it, (81) "with Burns and Poe, among the drinking poets. He was a member of the staff of Dunbar and Gratke's Astoria Budget when he wrote (in 1896) the ode on "The Launching of the Battleship Oregon," which was built at the Union Iron Works, San Francisco. Bob Johnson, Corvallis newspaper veteran, who knew him well, gives a reasonable version of why it was that the ode had to be telegraphed to San Francisco to be read at the launching. Simpson had been commissioned to write the dedicatory verses. Day followed day; no poetry. The muse was elusive, and the thirsty bard sought spirituous inspiration. Sam delayed, and waited, and proscrastinated, and well, anyhow, Narcissus White Kinney of Astoria, who was to read the poem, took her train for San Francisco without it. As the eleventh hour approached, Simpson's friends put on the pressure. Sam wrote the poem in Oscar Dunbar's house, and, as Merle Chessman tells it, the business men of Astoria made up a purse (82) to pay the wire tolls, and the poem of 78 lines, which is found in his published works, was telegraphed through in time to be read at the launching.
Astoria was the home port of a long list of newspapers, some reference to which will be made in these pages. The two most important of all, however, are the Astorian, already noted, and the Budget. The Budget was founded as a weekly in October, 1892, by Oscar W. Dunbar, native Oregonian, born in the Waldo hills near Salem, and John E. Gratke. Dunbar was one of the most picturesque, fightingest characters ever connected with Oregon journalism. Let us sketch in a bit of his remarkable career
He learned the printer's trade on the Oregonian, became a char-
