The Local Papers

In 1950, George Smalley celebrated his 78th birthday by attending a screening of Broken Arrow, a movie about Indian agent Tom Jeffords' friendship with Cochise, the great Chiricahua Apache chief. Smalley was so intrigued by how much actor James Stewart sounded like Jeffords, he closed his eyes to savor the memory.

It had been nearly 50 years since Smalley hoisted beers with the aging Indian agent. In those days, the young reporter from Minnesota seemed to know everyone. He shared campfires with legendary Prescott newspaperman-turned-Rough Rider Buckey O'Neill, swapped information with fellow scribe James H. McClintock, and talked politics with governors Alexander O. Brodie and George W.P. Hunt. The list went on.

In 1896, when the slender, mustachioed Smalley arrived in Arizona and landed a job with The Arizona Republican (now The Arizona Republic), Phoenix still retained vestiges of the Old West, with hard-drink-ing cowboys, gambling houses and occa-sional shootings. Even so, it had slowed since McClintock's first week on the Salt River Valley Herald 17 years earlier when, he wrote, "there were nine violent deaths to chronicle ... a double lynching ... and a couple of stage robberies."

Phoenix, population 4,000, moved forward, spurred by a thriving agricultural base and recently expanded rail and tele-graph services. Electric streetcars and bicycles competed with horse-drawn transportation, a women's club pushed for a town library, and civic leaders discussed harnessing the flood-prone Salt River the first step toward construction of the Roosevelt Dam.

Meanwhile, the Arizona Republican acquired the Territory's first linotype machine, a fitting companion for its electricpowered, double-cylinder press. It also carried up-to-date telegraph dispatches from the fledgling Associated Press wire service. When railroad executive Frank Murphy bought the Republican, he moved it to better quarters and hired New York Times editor Charles Randolph to give it an urban touch.

The Republican's newfound solvency set it apart from most frontier newspapers, which struggled to survive in sparsely populated, cash-strapped communities. A frontier paper meant cramped quarters, worn equipment, itinerant printers and deadbeat subscribers. It meant local news augmented by dated rewrites from other papers, and business promotions shamelessly posing as articles. It meant long hours, low wages and, for owners, a threadbare return on investment of 2 or 3 percent.

Yet frontier papers sprouted like weeds, accompanied by dyspeptic editors with a fondness for John Barleycorn, name-calling and feuds. One of them, John Marion of the Yuma Miner, routinely bludgeoned opponents in print with epithets such as "skunk," "nincompoop" and that erudite Victorian closer, "lying hermaphrodite."

Somehow, over the years, only a handful of fistfights and a couple of bloodless duels resulted from such invective.

Animosity usually morphed into print, as in this skewering of an inebriated Marion by William Berry, his equally bibulous rival at the Yuma Sentinel: "As [Marion] lay, with drunken slobber issuing from his immense mouth and his ears reaching up so high, everyone was impressed that here was the connecting link between the cat-fish and the jackass."

At the other (and lonely) end of the spectrum was Louis Hughes, the teetotaling publisher of the Arizona Daily Star, who, with his wife, Josephine, championed woman suffrage and the eight-hour workday while crusading against prosti-tution and gambling. Although unjustly maligned by his hard-living colleagues as an insufferable prig, it is true that Hughes refused to attend christening ceremonies for the U.S.S. Arizona because champagne was used.

THE ARIZONA REPUBLICAN

workday while crusading against prosti-tution and gambling. Although unjustly maligned by his hard-living colleagues as an insufferable prig, it is true that Hughes refused to attend christening ceremonies for the U.S.S. Arizona because champagne was used.

Some men drifted in and out of journal-ism, viewing it as a portable tool rather than a lifetime calling. O'Neill and McClin-tock wore several hats during their careers: judge, educator, mayor, journalist, post-master, entrepreneur, sheriff, soldier and historian. Even Smalley, born into a news-paper family, left Arizona journalism after six years for government work. But those six years account for three-quarters of his memoir, My Adventures in Arizona, pub-lished in 1966.

Smalley originally came to Arizona to recuperate from pneumonia. He bought property near what is now Camelback Mountain and set up a tent with a ramada. Following doctor's orders, he cooked rare meat over coals, drank plenty of milk, and ate up to a pound of butter a day. He exer-cised daily and swam in the canal. Under this cholesterol-inducing regimen, Smalley gained 40 pounds and robust health.

After joining the Republican, Smalley was named mining correspondent and sent on a lengthy buckboard tour of mining camps. He started at the fabled Vulture gold mine in Wickenburg and worked his way north to the Rim of the Grand Canyon and Buckey O'Neill, who was then exploring for copper and promoting a rail-road line from Williams.

THE FRONT PAGE Today's newspaper layouts have changed dramatically from those of the turn of the century, namely an August 5, 1900, edition of The Arizona Republican, and the January 3, 1886, Arizona Daily Star. Arizona Historical Society Tucson

Along the way, Smalley enjoyed the hos-pitality of his convivial hosts and developed a keen interest in mining. He quickly bonded with O'Neill, whose crisp manner reminded him of Theodore Roosevelt. At the Canyon, he inspected diggings, climbed a 1,000-foot rock face without equipment, and typed dispatches at a makeshift desk, often pausing to admire the changing colors of the spires and rock walls.

When Smalley departed, the grateful O'Neill thrust a roll of bills at him, which he politely declined. He considered O'Neill's generosity as host to be compensation enough. Conflict of interest, apparently, did not cross his mind. In fact, Smalley once sat on a story about a gold strike at the request of railroad execu-tive Epes Randolph. The delay enabled Randolph to wrest control of the mine before competitors got wind of it. In return, Smalley received an Arizona rail pass.

Despite the situational ethics, frontier journalists mostly got it right. A few years later, Smalley exposed a $3 million swindle by the Spenazuma Mining Co., when he snuck into the mining camp and discovered it was seeded with copper samples for gullible investors. He was shot at twice on the way out. Later, he rejected a $5,000 bribe to retract the exposé.

Smalley spent most of his time culling stories from public meetings, saloons, businesses, even stagecoaches. When a story broke late in the evening, he faced the ultimate deadline: At midnight the power shut off and with it the press. Smalley would type furiously while the foreman leaned over his shoulder and yanked out copy for the Linotype operator.

A glance at a Republican front page from the 1890s reveals editorial content not much different from today's general-interest sheets. Articles include an exposé of Standard Oil's monopolistic coupling with the railroads, a dispatch from Rome about rioting incited by "flannel-mounted anarchists," an update on the Graham County barley crop and a paean to a newly installed, steam-powered meat cooler.

While the Republican operated in the black, Smalley operated on the edge. He often received chits redeemable for goods or services in lieu of a paycheck. On the road, the paper paid only his expenses. Had it not been for freelancing, he could not have afforded to work for the paper.

Once, when Smalley threatened to leave, the editor offered to write him a letter of recommendation. Not surprisingly, the young reporter began to look favorably at mining and real estate.

In November 1897, Smalley headed into northern Mexico's Sierra Madre to report on rumored gold strikes. He stayed for seven months filing dispatches from the saddle while keeping an eye peeled for personal opportunities. “They all think I've got the [gold] fever bad,” he wrote his mother. “They think I'm going to run up against it.” The trip was straight out of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, John Huston's famed 1948 film. Smalley slept under the stars, shared beans with humble peasants, dodged ban-dits and drank mescal with a Shakespeare-spouting distiller. He filed a gold claim, and then lost it to conniving Mexican officials. In a Hermosillo cantina, Smalley and some American pals got into a chair-throwing brawl with Mexicans who taunted them about the Spanish-American War.

SMALLEY SPENT MOST OF HIS TIME CULLING STORIES FROM PUBLIC MEETINGS, SALOONS, BUSINESSES, EVEN STAGECOACHES.

When Smalley returned to Phoenix, he possessed lifelong memories and ample freelance material, but little else. It was back to “working for nothing.” In a letter home, he wrote: “What he [Randolph] considers a good salary may consist of a meal ticket and enough money to buy a glass of beer every Sunday.”

Still, Smalley kept the faith. When the Republican bought a competitor, the Phoenix Herald, he was appointed its city editor. In 1900, he accepted the editorship of the struggling Tucson Daily Citizen. After resurrecting it, he was sacked by a new owner. Smalley then started his own news-paper, the Tucson Post, reasoning, perhaps, that he was less likely to fire himself.

In 1902, the newly married Smalley left journalism for a job as secretary to Territorial Governor Alexander O. Brodie. It was the first of several government jobs he would hold over the next 20 years before retiring as an insurance agent.

In later life, Smalley served as president of the Arizona Pioneers Historical Society, which published his memoirs posthumously. Despite his bittersweet experiences, Smalley recalled his years as a frontier journalist with affection. “I still like to pass a newspaper office,” he wrote wistfully, “and get a whiff of the aroma of printer's ink.” Smalley died in 1956.