selves but on the help we have from others—upon the way our organization functions; upon the faithful co-operation of our friends and fellow workers.
As to ourselves we must first be unafraid. In the face of danger and excitement we must be courageous and cool-headed. We must have faith in ourselves and our helpers. With mind unruffled by fear we must see clearly, and having estimated the situation we must act promptly and with no uncertainty. Then, having acted, we must have the firmness to continue in the course we feel is right, discarding doubts that may arise.
AID OF OTHERS NEEDED
No matter how certain we may be of ourselves and how well we may see and do our part, we must have the help of others as keen and devoted as we ourselves may be. Without the helpful cooperation of others our greatest efforts may end in failure.
The newspaper profession has furnished many heroic examples of meeting emergencies. We have heard of many instances of publishing in the face of apparently insuperable obstacles. We know of numerous cases where in the presence of a calamity the spirit of friendly cooperation has asserted itself, and business rivals or political enemies have for gotten their differences and fought one another’s battles. Time after time, in various parts of the country it has been recorded that where a newspaper has been burned out or has suffered some other disaster its most active opponent has offered full facilities for use until the unfortunate one has been able to restore its own equipment.
CORRESPONDENT ACTS PROMPTLY
Every newspaperman has been thrilled by the record of Astoria’s fire and its aftermath of heroic endeavor. An emergency thrust itself upon us on the morning of December 8. While flames were devouring building after building and gradually swelled a fire into a conflagration, Portland slept peacefully beneath a soft blanket of new-fallen snow. My telephone rang long before day-break and the news was given to me. My first act was to wire our correspondent at Astoria, asking him to call by long distance telephone with all available facts. No sooner had I reached the office than he was calling me, but not in response to my message, which may never have reached him. He was doing it on his own initiative. He gave material for bulletins which told the story up to that time and forecast the ultimate loss with surprising accuracy. Our bulletins at that hour estimated the loss at between ten and twelve million dollars, which proved close to the final figures of the insurance adjusters. I asked our correspondent to call me every half hour and he did that with clock-like precision throughout that trying day, giving each time the story of the spread of the flames. This man, Mr. C. A. Murphey, of the Astoria Budget, a major in the world war, schooled to facing trying situations, gave a fine example of meeting an emergency.
KEEPING PACE WITH DISASTER
The new building of the Astoria Budget was among the first to be swept by the flames. Later in the morning Murphey’s accounts told of the fire eating its way toward the new building of the Morning Astorian. He told how the Astorian was starting to move out while the fire was still several blocks away. The next time he called he said the sparks had ignited the roof of the Astorian’s building. They were then moving out the linotype machines. The next half hour’s installment told of the fire having swept through the newspaper’s plant.
While the flames were still spreading we heard of the staff of the Budget get ting out editions on mimeographed sheets. Later in the day Mr. Murphey at my request got Mr. J. S. Dellinger, publisher of the Astorian, on the telephone for me. Mr Dellinger was displaying a fine spirit of fortitude in the emergency. When I expressed my regret that his
