Just a week after the Portland Weekly Times entered the daily field, December 18, 1860, Henry L. Pittock, new owner of the Oregonian, announced his purpose to enter the daily field—which he did as soon as he could assemble an adequate plant.

The name of Henry L. Pittock already has been used many times in this story of the Oregon press. Let's stop here and give a brief survey of this historic publisher.

A native of Pennsylvania, he had learned to set type on his home-town paper in that state. He had come west a few months earlier than the young Harvey Scott, and when he stepped into the Oregonian office that day in November, 1853, to ask Publisher Dryer for a job, he was 17, on his own, and seriously in need of work. Already he had applied in vain to Editor D. J. Schnebly for a job on the little Spectator at Oregon City. Papers were few in early Oregon, and printers were not in the demand they had been in the years of the gold rush. So Pittock needed that job, any job. It is told of him, however, that he had refused a job as bartender in one of early Oregon's saloons, feeling a repugnance for the liquor traffic.^[1]

So he approached Dryer in the Oregonian office.

"Well, young man, what can you do?" was the editor-publisher's challenge.

"I can set type."

"Well, let's see what you can do with this." "This" was a piece of reprint—the sort of thing that has launched so many young printer-editors on journalistic careers.

A proof was pulled of the result. Dryer found it was practically errorless. Tossing the lad a five-dollar gold piece (perfectly lawful money in those days), he invited him to call again.

The calls were regular, soon becoming daily; Pittock had found his job, and the Oregonian had found the man who was to carry it as a going business concern, through good times and bad, for three score years.^[2]

Dryer's somewhat uncertain health, his eye-trouble, and his absences in the public service and on campaign trips for Whigs and later Republicans, made it necessary frequently for him to leave the paper in charge of a substitute. He found young Pittock loyal, industrious, sober, and systematic—qualities which no institution needs more than a newspaper and which were none too common in one person in those days. In some of these respects, indeed, as elsewhere intimated, he was an improvement on his employer. In November, 1856, Pittock and Elisha Treat Gunn, prominent early-day printer

1. ↑ The paper claimed 3,000 circulation, probably a rosy estimate, since the population of Portland in 1860 was just about 3,000.
2. ↑ George H. Himes, personal interview, 1936 (credit for story of Pittock's interview with Dryer; reference figure omitted, end of ninth paragraph, page 109).