The next day Mrs. Johnson began her new work as acting postmaster of Madras, receiving the appointment as postmaster May 31, 1934.
February 4, 1935, Mrs. Johnson was married to A. R. Bowen, for the previous ten years representative of the Mergenthaler Linotype Company in the Northwest. Mr. Bowen took active charge of the Pioneer, giving part time to its operation and employing J. R. Blakely, former Eugene and Portland printer, as local manager. Mrs. Johnson-Bowen resumed personal charge of the paper two years later.
The biggest news event in the history of the Pioneer, and aside from the death of the publisher the most tragic, was the fire which swept Madras in September 1924. The entire business district was wiped out, only two or three buildings escaping. One of these, how ever, was the home of the Pioneer.
Mrs. Johnson's experience at Madras is an example of what women publishers sometimes have to contend with. "A printer . . . refused to cooperate," she reports. "He would not take orders from a woman. I promptly discharged him and telephoned to Hal Hoss, then secretary of the Oregon Editorial Association, and asked if he could send me a printer. In the phone conversation he asked me what model the linotype was, and I did not even know that much. Anyway he sent me a printer, a Mr. Foster, who was a very good man."
Culver.—Several capable publishers gave this Jefferson county town of 100 or so population a faithful effort but were unable to get a publication really rooted. The experiments continued close to ten years; and contrary to the record in many other places, there was no change of name; it was the Deschutes Valley Tribune from its cradle to the end. P. A. Chandler and O. C. Young were the first editors and publishers. The year was 191 1. They charged their subscribers $1.25 a year for an independent eight-page newspaper 13×20, issued on Thursdays. The next year the circulation manager (may the Lord have mercy on his soul!) certified to 570 circulation. In 1916 Chandler let Young have the paper, and he showed the real quality of his imagination by estimating the circulation at 740. The next year M. C. Athey, later of Portland, did the editing and publishing; and the year after, with the population down to 95, P. A. Chandler came back. He suspended the paper in 1919 after estimating that his circulation had gone down to 375. The day of high circulations—and newspapers—in Culver was over.
