Our Correspondent’ s Motives Explained – The Sick Man on the Improve – Other Locals.
- Farmers will be very busy during the next few weeks making hay. Lucern crops are extremely light this year.
- Miss Annie Egbert of West Jordan, is visiting with her sister Mrs. R. W. Barnes. She is expecting to remain all summer in Kaysville.
- Nothing has yet been done looking to its celebration on July 4th, and the probabilities are that the Nation’s birthday will slip by without any unusual demonstrations.
- The new Union Pacific time card cuts off the regular morning mail from the north and leaves Kaysville with but two mails a day. The change occurred Yesterday.
- Mrs. Eva Smith and her sister, Miss Beach, have gone to their old home in Nebraska on a visit. Mrs. Smith expects to return in about three weeks, but Miss Beach will probably stay in the east.
- Andrew Jenson of Salt Lake City is here collecting all available data relating to the early settlement and subsequent history of Kaysville. He was the speaker at the regular services on Sunday.
- Michael Clark, the unfortunate young man whose prospects for matrimonial, bliss were shattered on the eve of the day set for his wedding by the serious accident recorded in last week’s CLIPPER, is slowly convalescing.
- A meeting of the Woman’s Suffrage association has been called for next Friday evening, and a cordial invitation is extended to all who are interested in womans’ emancipation from political serfdom, to be present. Miss Nellie Colbrooke and Mrs. Taylor of Salt Lake have been invited to address the meeting.
- And now it appears that the eagle was not dead, but only sleeping, and with pleasure I notice evidence of an awaking from the lethargic slumber. W. Earl Smith has returned now, and taken charge. If last week’s issue may be taken as a criterion, he will at least make it more lively; but whether the particular kind of life he is infusing into its columns will improve the Eagle’s reputation or not, remains to be seen. I refer to the article concerning my correspondence in the CLIPPER. One thing it accomplishes, and only one.– It demonstrates his ability as a “mud slinger,” and his utter uselessness as manager of a respectable newspaper. His vocabulary of slurring invectives is almost unlimited, judging from the colossal mass of vile names he hurls at me. The abusive language he makes use of is beneath the dignity of a ‘gentleman, or a respectable newspaper; but like a boomerang when it fails to reach its mark, it flies back into the face of him who sent it. Such indecent remarks simply show his shallow-brained condition, and they pass me by as the idle winds which I respect not.”
Mr. Smith could make no excuse for treating hiss patrons in such an unfair manner as he has, and when brought to an account, he resorts to the weapons such persons usually employ to bluff bull-doze, and insult who ask only for their rights.
Mr. Smith came to Kaysville to start a newspaper if the business men would guarantee a stipulated amount of advertising. It was understood that the paper was to be newsy and wide awake, and it is stated, that he promised a circulation at once of 5600, and this was to be increased to 1,000 by the end of this year; on these representations he secured the required amount of advertising. Almost every merchant, mechanic and professional man in Kaysville and Layton joined in a generous support of what they believed was a commendable enterprise.
After the first issue the paper retrograded rapidly, until it was common street talk that there was nothing in it. People become ashamed to let visitors to the town see what purported to be our local paper,,–“the moulder of public opinion”– and when I mentioned in the CLIPPER that there was “nothing in it,” it was only repeating what the public had been saying for weeks.
Meanwhile, Mr. Smith had gone away, and instead of fulfilling his agreement to make a good paper of the Eagle, he was in Mona, Juab county, drawing a salary as school teacher. His wife had charge of the paper. It is said the circulation has never exceeded 100 copies weekly; as to that I am not sure, but it certainly has never approached the promised 500, to say nothing of 1,000. Under these conditions advertisers began to be dissatisfied; several ordered their ads taken out and refused to further replenish the eagles exchequer; but their objections availed nothing, and the ads were kept running, presumably to fill up space. One man went so far as to threaten a suit for damages if his card was not taken out forthwith, for he considered an advertise in such a sheet a detriment to his business. That Mr. S. has not been prosecuted for obtaining money under false pretenses is due entirely to the leniency of our citizens, not because he has failed to lay himself liable.
Finally the editor went to Mona also, leaving a young lady and a small boy to run the whole affair. To their credit, it may be said they got out a better paper than some previous issues had been.
As for his plaintive wail that I attacked the paper because it had “heretofore been edited by a woman,” it is a rank libel on an honorable profession to say it had been edited at all. It is a very ungallant act for him to shulk behind his wife, and use her as a shield to ward off from himself the shafts of honest criticism.
The professor says I know nothing of rhetoric. I have never boasted of being a rhetorician or grammarian; but one thing is apparent in Mr. Smith’s writings- it be ever studied how to write with force and elegance, he fails utterly to make use of what he has been taught.
His calling the CLIPPER “’scrub’ concern, not worthy of the name newspaper,” comes with bad grace from one who has managed such a sheet as has been described in the foregoing. If he will compare the back files of the Eagle with contemporaneous issues of the CLIPPER, and discount his own paper 50 percent, he will realize that the modest Bountiful paper is away in advance of the pretentious and boastful Eagle.
A newspaper, if it is what it should be, reflects the sentiments, ideas, and, to a great extent, the character of the community it represents. A paper published in a community of prosperous enterprising and progressive people should have some of these same characteristics, and the people need not be expected to tolerate a sheet with six pages of patent inside, printed in Denver, and the other two pages filled with dead advertisements, plate matter and an occasional item of news.
The writer has no desire to continue this controversy, and the only reason for saying what I have is because of the unwarranted attack the Eagle has made on me. If I have succeeded by my correspondence to the CLIPPER in waking up the male Eagle to such an extent that he will make an effort to improve his paper, my whole object is accomplished and I am content. ATCHE BEE
KAYSVILLE, June 19, 1893.