Anaconda's Ghost

Few occurrences could exert less effect on the Press of the land than the passing last week of the Anaconda (Mont.) Standard. As an important State daily it had been anesthetized three years ago, cut to a strictly local circulation of 2,000. Last week witnessed merely its last official gasp: the paper was taken over as a four-page section of its thriving stepchild, the Butte Montana Standard.

But many an oldster could recall the lusty history of the Anaconda Standard-- conceived in anger, nurtured in strife and extravagance; could recall how, as the personal organ of the late famed copper tycoon Marcus Daly, the Standard stood at the turn of the century among the best edited dailies in the U. S.

Marcus Daly and the late U. S. Senator Andrews Clark, prospectors, amassed great riches from Montana gold & copper in the 1870's and 1880's. Clark centered his interests in Butte. Daly built a huge copper smelter at Anaconda, 26 mi. away. From close friendship, their relationship cooled to business and political rivalry, flamed finally in open warfare.

In the course of his financial manipulations Clark came into possession of the indigent Butte Miner. To his surprise and delight he found it a handy weapon for belaboring Marcus Daly. Daly endured the attacks until 1889, then vowed to put his enemy in his place.

Fortuitously Marcus Daly then met Dr. John H. Durston, a learned philologist who had abandoned a professorship at Syracuse University to edit the Syracuse Standard, which he quit in the heat of an editorial dispute. In his own luxurious Montana Hotel (to which an extra story had been added because "it didn't look good enough") Daly opened his checkbook and commanded Dr. Durston to build for him, there in the sprawling, brawling smelter village of Anaconda, "the best newspaper that can be made." Editor Durston imported two of his associates from the Syracuse Standard and set to work. In time the new paper attained some 20,000 circulation (practically the saturation point for the State) mostly in Butte, where it gave Clark's Miner a sound thrashing. A special "paper train'' of Daly's own Butte, Anaconda & Pacific Railroad would rush it there, hot off the press.

Its news section thoroughly covered the State, the Nation and the world. Every intermountain town of importance had its Anaconda Standard bureau. It was like a metropolitan gem set in a mountain wasteland. The finest mechanical equipment was bought. In the early days of the Mergenthaler linotype machine, the Anaconda Standard at one time had more of them in operation than had any Manhattan daily. When Richard F. Outcault's "Yellow Kid" ushered colored comics into the Manhattan field, Publisher Daly had to have some, sent for Thorndyke, Trowbridge, Loomis, then three of the highest-priced newspaper artists in the country. Color decks and photo-engraving equipment were rushed to Anaconda and the Standard produced its own four-page colored comic supplement.

All the while, the Standard was functioning as Marcus Daly's mouthpiece; not to glorify its publisher but to lambaste Clark. One of Daly's consuming desires was to make Anaconda the capital of Montana. Clark opposed him, and won: the capital went to Helena. Thereafter Publisher Daly vowed that Clark should never realize his ambition of going to the U. S. Senate. Senators were elected by the State Legislators, who were, in Montana, either Daly men or Clark men. The Standard would print the current Clark bidding price for legislative votes which, according to the Standard, finally reached $20,000. At that juncture Daly ordered his own legislative henchmen to take the Clark bid. They obeyed and Clark was elected. Presently the Standard "broke" the story and the U. S. Senate refused to seat Senator-elect Clark, making a Roman holiday for the Standard's talented cartoonists. But Clark had the last laugh, for Montana's lieutenant-governor appointed him to fill the Senate vacancy.

Until his death in 1900, Publisher Daly is said to have spent some $5,000,000 on the Standard, which could have been a money-maker without his insistence on extravagance. After his death the bitter interest was gone, the paper waned in importance. As late as 1913 when great Anaconda Copper Mining Co. took it over from Widow Daly, it was the foremost sheet in Montana and dominated even in Butte, but not for much longer.

Three years ago the mining company bought the old enemy Butte Miner from the Clark heirs. William A. Clark Jr. tried to keep the feud alive by taking away the Miner staff and starting a new Butte daily, but there was not enough hatred left. After a few months he abandoned the project. The battle was over. Of the original Standard editors only famed Charles H. ("Egg") Eggleston survived, and he was finally forced into comparative retirement by failing eyesight. A few printers and pressmen continued to turn out the ghostlike Standard--until last week.

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