Cut Rate Newspaper War in Oregon
By Fred C. Baker, Editor of the Tillamook Headlight.
Editor Oregon Exchanges:—I am willing to admit that my text does not sound good, and it looks decidedly bad in print but if it brings a few of the erring brothers to the mourners bench this article will not be wasted. Somehow it seems hard to deal with cut rate newspapermen, notwithstanding the successful effort of the State Editorial association in having the rate bill passed at the last session of the legislature. I thought that bill would put every newspaperman on his dignity and we would insist on cooperating with the other newspapers, making the rate for legal advertising all over the state five cents a line. They are not doing this, for cut rates woefully prevail in some counties. I will give but two illustrations:
Recently a Portland law firm called me up and asked me what my rate was for a certain legal advertisement. I wired back that all newspapers in Tillamook county charged five cents per line. The advertisement was sent to me as well as to newspapers in Albany and Toledo, for the advertisement had to be published in three counties. When the Portland attorneys received my bill, which was for $76.00, and the bills from the Linn and Lincoln county papers, my bill gave them a sort of duck-fit, for the other newspapers charged less than one half what I had charged. No doubt the Portland attorneys thought that I was robbing them, for that is what a McMinnville attorney wrote me when I charged him five cents a line for a legal advertisement saying that he could get the same advertisement published in Yamhill county for one third what I had charged.
Now I do not feel very guilty nor does my conscience prick me in the least because I am classed as a robber. But if all the newspapermen of Oregon would cooperate and adopt and stick with the legal rate I am sure I will not be accused of being a robber in the future.
Will you pardon me for making a contrast? Some few years ago the dairy industry of Tillamook county was all shot to pieces because of lack of cooperation. It was the cut rate system, kept alive by foxy speculators, who kept the price of cheese down to the minimum, and it is the cut rate newspapermen who not only rob themselves of a fair remuneration but other newspapermen who have to meet the cut rate system. For several years I advocated and preached cooperation among the dairymen of Tillamook county, and today the cooperative system among the dairymen of Tillamook county is one of the most successful and satisfactory farmer ’s organizations in Oregon. When the cut rate system was in vogue cheese sold for seven cents per pound but when the dairymen cooperated the price of cheese soon went to twenty cents per pound and is selling whole sale today at twenty five cents.
As long as Tillamook dairymen were fools enough to sell their cheese for seven cents per pound the cut rate sellers and buyers were always
