USA > Kansas > Sedgwick County > History of Wichita and Sedgwick County, Kansas, past and present, including an account of the cities, towns and villages of the county, Vol. II > Part 3
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For a year Mr. Smith was sole owner of "The Beacon." In 1875 he gave a one-third interest in the paper to W. S. White, familiarly known as "Cap" White, of Kingman county. Wichita was growing rapidly and the new owners of "The Beacon" sought a location closer to the heart of the city. They chose the second floor of the building at 112 East Douglas avenue, lately occupied by the Jackson-Walker Coal Company. Into this build- ing "The Beacon" was moved in 1876. It remained there for eight years, when it was moved into the building which it has so long occupied at 121 North Market street. The old "Beacon" building being vacated for the new was erected during the boom days by Frank B. Smith and W. S. White. It was completed in 1884 and occupied immediately by the paper. Prior to this time "The Beacon" had remained a weekly, with the exception of the first few months, as a daily publication. A new and larger press was installed in the new home, however, and "The Beacon" again came out as a daily paper.
"The Beacon's" first residence in "The Beacon" block was of short duration. Mr. Smith and Mr. White, who had owned the paper for ten years, sold it to a new firm called Hotchkiss & Eaton. The new owners took the paper into a small one-story brick building at 119 West Douglas, which is now occupied by the Puckett & Bagby feed store. While "The Beacon" was being issued from this building there was another change in the management. The firm of Hotchkiss & Eaton sold to another firm known as Richardson & Peck. Mr. Richardson and Mr. Peck continued to edit and manage the paper until 1890. . In 1890 Frank B. Smith repurchased a half interest in "The Beacon" from Mr. Peck. The paper was then moved back into "The Beacon" block on North Market street, where it was until this month. Three years after this last move of "The Beacon" plant, - Frank B. Smith died. In the following year Mrs. Smith, his widow, purchased the half interest owned by Mr. Richardson, thus becoming the sole owner of the paper. A few years later H. J. Hagny and Mrs. Smith were married and Mr. Hagny became the editor as well as manager. In March, 1907, Henry J. Allen organized The Beacon Publishing Company and bought the paper from Mr. Hagny .- From New Home Edition of "Daily Beacon."
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HISTORY OF THE "WICHITA EAGLE," By Charles E. Bigelow, Wichita, Kan.
Adequately to portray the career of the "Wichita Eagle," to review its time-honored course, to tell its graphic story amid stirring scenes of primeval days on a rugged and storm-tossed frontier, it ought to be woven with the story of the life of its able founder, the late Col. Marshall M. Murdock. To diassociate one from the other would be as empty and futile as to emblazon the immortal drama of "Hamlet" without Hamlet, to sing the enduring hymn of "Heloise" without Abelard, to recite the story of the War of the Rebellion without the picturesque character of Abraham Lincoln. The concurrent lives and activities of the "Eagle" and its virile founder and editor for over a third of a century are so interwoven, and so much identical one with the other that no historic resume of the one is complete without the tale of the other. Marsh Murdock, as he is yet and will always remain, familiarly known, directed the destinies of the publication from its inception up to a few hours of his untimely demise. Its tone, its policy, editorial position, he alone chose, and with fearless and unswerving hand drove straight through to an unflinching adherence of that established policy and standard of high tone.
But, since in another chapter is told the life story of Colonel Murdock, it becomes the function of this article to adhere as closely as possible to the real story, historical and anecdotal of the "Eagle" and its allied publications, cleaving away for the moment the more personal and living element of its distinguished editor.
The Wichita "Eagle" is entering its thirty-ninth year. It was born on April 12, 1872-fathered and founded by the late M. M. Murdock, and files of this paper carefully preserved now in the "Eagle's" library show that first copy, sear and yellow with time, bearing the caption "The Wichita City Eagle." There was no railroad into Wichita then and the printing material had to be hauled to this point from Newton in wagons. Mr. Syl Dunkin, the teamster of the late James R. Mead, now of Tacoma, Wash., had charge of the freighting, which occupied a day. The entire office was a trifle more than could be hauled by two teams, owing to the condition of the road.
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When the material arrived here it was housed in a wooden shanty on North Main street. One of the men who helped to take the material into the shanty from the wagons was the noted Dave Payne, who afterwards became the originator of the boom to open the then wild country of Oklahoma for settlement, and who became the leader of the famous organization of boomers who caused the country to be opened finally, five years after his sudden death. Payne county in Oklahoma and Payne township in Sedgwick county are named after this man, who was, by the way, the Democratic candidate for state senator against the editor of the "Eagle," who, for such a long time, filled that position when his district comprehended an area equal to about forty counties.
There were two names originally proposed for the new paper,-one "The Eagle," proposed by Colonel Murdock him- self, the other "The Wichita Victor," in honor of the editor's wife, Victoria Mayberry Murdock. A silver dollar was flipped to determine the choice and the side emblazoned with the American Eagle turned up and settled the matter according to agreement. It is not stated in the original sketch of this episode where the editor in those days borrowed that dollar. It was the third "Eagle" in the United States at that time, since, a name that is very common in the realms of newspaper nomenclature. The other two were the "Brooklyn Eagle" and a paper published somewhere in Michigan.
The whole town was very anxious to know what name the editor would give to the new paper, but no one had a hint of it save only Mrs. Victoria Murdock, wife of the editor, and the present owner and proprietor. Colonel Murdock aimed to have a joke with five or six friends, and that number of the first issue were called "The Wichita Galoot." These were sent to the friends referred to; then the head was removed and the remain- der of the issue came out as "The Wichita City Eagle." Pretty soon those half-dozen friends who had "The Galoot" delivered to them came rushing down to the office to protest against such an undignified name, and it was only then that Colonel Murdock revealed to them the real name of the paper, which pleased them greatly, though not a few still insisted the name of "The Victor" should have been given. Among these friends was the late James R. Mead, the distinguished pioneer of this part of Kansas,
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and who for a long and active lifetime lived in Wichita, the city he helped to found and to give its name.
There is some doubt as to the identity of the first subscriber, but the claim of Mr. Dickey, of Newton, at present a leading druggist and jeweler of the Harvey county capital, practically settles the controversy. When Colonel Murdock was coming to Wichita to start the "Eagle" Mr. Dickey met him at Newton and learning of his intentions at once subscribed for the yet dreamed of paper on the spot, even before it was born.
The inside pages of the first copy of the paper being missing, we do not know what the salutatory of Colonel Murdock con- tained, but the business announcement on the first page laid down the rule that no type of a display character be used that was larger than pica, which is two sizes larger than the type used on this page, which is nonpareil. This rule referred to advertisements as well as to headlines. Cuts and "unseemly illustrations" were also barred, and due notice was given to humbugs that their advertisements would not be received, and the editor fought untiringly almost to the very day of his death for the newspaper ideals of his younger days. The "flaring headlines" he never had any use for, but times changed and when these became the fashion, while he yielded, he never liked them.
Among the very first advertisers in the "Eagle" only a few now remain in Wichita. Dr. Fabrique, who was then in part- nership with Dr. E. B. Allen, had a professional card in the first column. William C. Little, who was then a practicing attorney, now president of the Wichita Loan & Trust Company, also had a small card. John C. Martin, now a member of the Board of Education, had a card advertising his restaurant. "Doc" Holmes advertised books and stationery. Lee Hays also adver- tised in this first issue. Mr. A. Hess advertised the business from which has evolved the present Wichita Wholesale Grocery Company. Among the other advertisers were the late Senator P. B. Plumb, who was then a young lawyer at Emporia, with a large practice down this way.
The Church Directory reveals only two houses of worship- the Episcopal, presided over by Rev. J. P. Hilton, who alter- nated with J. F. Nessley, of the Methodist Church, every other Sunday, and the Presbyterian Church, which latter edifice was
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then located about where Ike West's stone yard now is, with J. P. Harson presiding.
Only two city officers are now here, John M. Martin, who was a councilman, and Dr. Fabrique, who was a member of the School Board.
The "Eagle" was the product of the editor's faith in Wichita. With the clairvoyant power of his wonderful faculty for reason- ing he foresaw that there must be a town of some size at the junction of the two rivers. He had examined the country before, counted its streams, examined their valleys and measured the capacity of the country to produce the things that were demanded by a growing country and a people ambitious to have a foreign commerce.
Having satisfied himself that there was a future he pro- ceeded to develop it, and from the day he landed in Sedgwick county until the day of his death he never lost faith in Wichita. Some of the most remarkable arguments ever made for any country were made by him during the first seventeen years of his residence here, and the most delightful and entertaining trip anyone can make is through the back files of the "Eagle" from 1872 to 1890.
The "Eagle" started in with a definite and well defined policy, and has never varied from it to any great length. Its fundamental idea was that the man who tilled the ground created the real wealth of nations. The first thought of the "Eagle," therefore, has ever been the farmers. After agriculture it has always regarded Commerce as the most likely thing to flourish in Wichita. Next to Commerce is Industry. These constitute the things in the ambition of the "Eagle" to make for funda- mental prosperity.
In other lines its policy has been from the start to be broad and liberal; to be clean, decent and conservative; to stand loyally for constituted authority ; to favor no class or clan or caste; to elevate the standard of civilization along broad lines; to stand firmly for wide education; to avoid connections that would ham- per its independence and its usefulness; to keep out of specu- lation and to confine itself altogether to legitimate newspaper work. This last policy was so strong with the editor of the "Eagle" that for ten years during the highest progress of the city-including the fateful years of the boom-he did not buy a foot of property in Wichita for speculation or for any other
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purpose. He was repeatedly offered choice lots in about every addition in Wichita, and in very new towns laid out in southern Kansas, yet he never touched any of them. He was proffered splendid opportunities by managers of railroads and others to acquire valuable property in townsites, but never accepted or embraced a single one. He did not believe in anything as a fortune maker but a good newspaper. He was content for others to make fortunes through his efforts and the work of his great brain, but he wanted none of it that way himself. He declined tempting offers to be elected to the directories of great corpora- tions having large enterprises on hand, but he accepted only one, and when that did not suit him he promptly resigned.
The "Eagle" prospered from the start along these lines of policy and it eventually accumulated a little money and a whole lot of good will from year to year. After a short time in the Main street office the paper was removed to the old Eagle Hall building, where the Boston Store now is. Later it built its own building next door and moved into it. When this became too crowded a third floor was added and this was its home until 1906, when temporary quarters were built for it on the site of the present new building, corner of Williams and South Market streets.
It was the intention to build around this shack, but architects said this could not be done without a great deal of expense, and the paper was removed to 119 North Water street, where it was published for nearly a year while the new building was going up.
From the postoffice Colonel Murdock wistfully watched the progress of the new building every day, but he never entered it, for the old adage verified itself-"When the new home is ready the hearse is at the door."
He never saw the handsomely appointed new room designed for his private sanctum, but his picture hangs there, crowned and draped and hallowed by evergreen immortelles, the wreath arc of which is changed and renewed three times each year; and for long it was the only picture that adorned its walls, as he was the only editor who directed the destinies of the paper for a span of thirty-five years, or since its founding.
In 1884 the paper became a daily with the old Missouri and Kansas Telegraph service-what was known as the pony report of the Associated Press. It soon became the daily paper for the whole great Southwest and wielded a powerful and salutary
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influence from the start. It attained a marvelous circulation during the boom, so that it had more subscribers than there were people in the town where it was published.
Early in the nineties-actually during the very worst time the country has ever seen in fifty years-it installed typesetting machinery, subscribed to the full report of the Associated Press, and with a courage that was desperate faced the tide of adversity. It mastered that tide after being stared in the face by Despair several times and came out on solid ground again without missing a single pay day. It did more than that. It kept up the wages of its men to scale and kept every one of its old employes when there was little profitable work for them to do. This was out of sentiment entirely, for it has always been the policy of the paper to stand by its loyal workers. In consequence of this the "Eagle" has more old employes today probably than any other paper in the world in proportion to its payroll. It has the sons of old employes and expects to have their grandsons and great- grandsons on its pay list. This sentiment of rotation of genera- tions is one of the marked features of the "Eagle" policy.
Today the "Eagle" is the third highest employer of labor in the city of Wichita. It can make this claim also that it has a greater circulation than any paper in the world published in a town of the size of Wichita, and that it goes into a greater pro- portion of the homes in the town in which it is published than any other daily paper in the world. These two latter claims are conceded by expert newspaper men everywhere.
Another thing it can claim-although with such certainty ---- that it goes to more different places in the world than any other paper published in any town the size of Wichita.
It has been computed that if the pages of the entire year's issue of the "Eagle" were joined together, end to end, the strip would go twice around the world and have enough left to extend from the Gulf of Mexico into Canada. To deliver it by carrier service alone 5,559 miles are traveled daily. This does not include the railway mail service. Its immensity can best be understood when it is said that about six tons of paper were used for the last special edition issued in the summer of 1910. The paper is now entirely owned by Mrs. Victoria Murdock, the consort of the late editor for nearly forty-five years. In any review of the career of the "Eagle" there must be mentioned the able and conservative business management of the late Roland P. Mur-
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dock, brother of the "Eagle's" editor, who was associated with him during the lifetime of both, both dying about the same time. Colonel Murdock established a severe and inviolable dead line between the functions of the two segregated departments, the editorial and strictly literary division and the business manage- ment. The writer well recalls the innumerable instances when the revered editor, respected and admired by everyone closely in touch with him, from the managing editor to the latest cub reporter, would remark, "We fellows up here on the third floor have no business whatever downstairs in the business office, save only on Mondays of each week when we draw our pay check. Neither has that crowd downstairs any business up here. So you fellows keep out of there, and I will see to it that they keep out of up here." This was a tradition and time-honored office rule. But through dreary and discouraging periods following the boom and the '93 and '94 panic it was the patient and saga- cious R. P. Murdock, never quite discouraged, who guided the frail craft over stormy financial seas, and lived to see it weather the tempestuous elements and come safely at last into port and anchor solidly in a haven of sure solidarity and permanent prosperity.
The "Daily Eagle" now has a circulation of over 35,000, widely spread throughout the Southwest, with an especially heavy subscription list in the city of Wichita, all of Kansas, Oklahoma and northern Texas. It is significant that scarcely a Wichita resident who moves away permanently to reside elsewhere but keeps up his subscription as the one final tie that binds to home memories and refreshing chronicles of the city he still loves. The mechanical division has a battery of six Mergenthaler lino- type machines of the latest improved designs and type. During the summer of 1910 a perfected Goss improved Sextuple press, with a capacity of 80,000 completely printed and folded papers an hour was installed. The stereotyping department has been all rehabilitated and overhauled with a complete new equipment, and the job division also fitted out all new.
Other publications issued from the "Eagle" plant are: The "Wichita Weekly Eagle," established in 1872, which is a metro- politan weekly newspaper, covering in its circulation one of the richest mail order fields in the Southwest. The guaranteed cir- culation is 30,000.
"The Arkansas Valley Farmer," established in 1909. An
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agricultural paper published every Friday. A high class farm journal publication, edited by experts on all matters pertaining to ranch, farm and agricultural pursuits. Guaranteed circula- tion 30,000. "The Wichita Daily Eagle," with 35,000 circulation, means 140,000 readers.
COL. MARSHALL M. MURDOCK.
By D. D. LEAHY.
In the first rank of citizenship no man in the history of Sedg- wick county has held a higher place than Colonel Marshall M. Murdock, founder of the Wichita Eagle. From the day he came to Sedgwick county in 1872 until the day of his death, January 2, 1908, he enjoyed unsurpassed public confidence and exercised an influence in the Southwest that gave direction not only to the thought of the public but to the development of the country. He was among the last of those great Western journalists who placed the impress of their character upon the civilization of their times. The age of his activity spanned the great events in American history between Buchanan and Taft and none of them escaped his observation and comment. He saw the birth of prac- tically every invention that made America the greatest nation in the world.
Colonel Murdock was born on October the 10th, 1837-the year Victoria ascended the throne of England-in the Pierpont settlement in what is now the state of West Virginia. His remote ancestry were Scotch but his more immediate ancestry dwelt in the north of Ireland, where one of them-his grand- father-was in rebellion against the government of England and had to flee to Virginia about the time of the Revolutionary War. This red blooded Irishman was a worker in metals and engaged in the iron molding business in his new home. This man's son Thomas, who became a minister of the gospel, married Catherine Pierpont, a relative of Governor Pierpont and also a relative of that Morgan family that produced the noted American financier. The first issue of that marriage was Colonel Murdock, the subject of this sketch. This Thomas Murdock had a quick conscience. He abhorred the institution of slavery and while still a young
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man set out for the West-settling at Irontown, in Ohio, where he engaged unsuccessfully in business. It was at Irontown that young Murdock secured a rudimentary education and first en- gaged in the printing business as an apprentice.
The fight for freedom had begun in Kansas. Pioneers were striving to establish a state without slavery. The entire nation was interested in the outcome of the super-heated agitation. Thomas Murdock put his family and worldly possessions into two covered wagons and pulled out for Kansas. He drove one of the teams and the boy Marshall, or "Marsh," as he was usually called, drove the other. For weeks they travelled overland and finally settled in Topeka, where a farm was taken. Through that farm John Brown often passed with slaves taken from their Southern masters.
As the spirit of the fathers was restless so was the spirit of the son and when the "Pike's Peak fever" broke out young Mar- shall hied himself off to the hills of golden promise. He set- tled at the place now called Leadville and there is little doubt of the fact that he was the first to discover silver in that camp. But they were hunting for gold and not for silver in those days and the white metal had no facination for them. Soon after- wards the Civil War broke out and as the father and two brothers had taken up arms and gone to the front Marshall returned to Kansas to take care of the mother and younger children. He did not go to the war himself until his state was threatened and he went out from Burlingame as a lieutenant colonel of Osage and Lyon county militia to resist invasion. Previous to this he had been working in a printing office at Lawrence and barely escaped massacre at the hands of the Quantrell gang by drop- ping into a well while the ruffians were sacking and burning the town. A few bullets were shot into the well after him but he was not injured.
In 1863, Colonel Murdock was married to Miss Victoria May- berry, of Douglas county, and they went to live in Burlingame where Mr. Murdock had established the "Chronicle." Nine years later when the Santa Fe railway announced that it would extend its line he loaded his print shop into two wagons and came to Wichita where he established the "Eagle."
Colonel Murdock had been a state senator for Osage and Lyon county and shortly after coming to Sedgwick county he was elected state senator for all that territory extending West-
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ward from Butler county to the Colorado state line, defeating David L. Payne, afterwards famous for the agitations and inva- sions that led to the opening of the present state of Oklahoma to settlement. Besides holding the office of state senator he became postmaster of Wichita and kept that position until Grover Cleveland became president in 1885. He was reappointed postmaster when Mckinley became president and held the office until the time of his death.
As he was by far a bigger man than the offices he held, his place in the world must be measured in other ways. He reached his highest stature in his profession. He was by all odds the best all-around editor in the state. In brilliancy he had no superior and in public usefulness it is doubtful if he ever had an equal. He was the greatest town boomer and town builder the Middle West has ever known. And he was honest in both. He saw as through a vision the future glory of the hamlet with which he had cast his fortune. He believed sincerely that it was des- tined to become the commercial center of the plains. He advo- cated every public enterprise that could contribute in any way to make it such. He encouraged every private enterprise that energy or capital ventured upon. He had a clear perception of the results of the development of the surrounding territory and saw with the eye of a prophet the coming of those thousands that have made the valley of the Arkansas blossom like the rose. He made the "Eagle" the oracle of the people, and to those inquir- ing for the land of promise it was never dumb. Wichita was to him as his own child and he watched its growth and development with equal care and love.
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