| Description |
THE UTAH NEWSPAPER HALL OF FAME George Crane and Henry Holley the co-owners. It was Gibbs1 baptism of fire in journalism. He described the Blade as "a novelty" and said subscriptions soon totalled 150. Local reaction to the paper was less than enthusiastic. To the end that Crane and Holley were victims of "a bad Indian scare" and decided to let their editor take over. "Indian scare," historian J. Cecil Alter explains, was a way of referring to supposed secret but summary exterminations by "Danites" or "Destroying Angels," alias Mormon vigilantes. So effective were they that Gibbs' printer concluded setting anti-Mormon editorials was unhealthy and he, too, vanished. He was replaced by two local girls, Mary Kelly and Belle Hunt, and the paper continued to be produced with a new policy: Free thinking, free utterance, free conduct within the law and a square deal to all! Gibbs1 next problem was with J. M. Viele and Lorenzo W. Gaisford, editor and proprietor respectively of the Millard County Progress in Fillmore. They charged Gibbs with being a literary pirate; he had them arrested for criminal libel. The Park Record of March 23, 1895 reported "Gibbs got worsted." The handwriting was on the wall. Gibbs began to mail the Blade from the Oasis post office rather than Deseret. Alter surmised, in retrospect, that "The Oasis postmaster was probably one of the few men in the country who was permitted by the militant editor to say the Blade was second class matter." Gibbs' own version in his manuscript, said: "One day the late Apostle, Francis M. Lyman, opened the sanctum door just wide enough to admit his face and inquired quizzically, 'Is the fighting editor in?' The gist of that interview was: 'Brother Gibbs, you are doing a good work, but don't go too far!'" Persuaded, Gibbs moved the paper to Nephi, retained the name Blade, and there published the first edition of Volume Three on June 15, 1895. But on October 26, 1895, his own paper announced he had accepted editorship of the Provo Dispatch. His relationship with the controversial weekly was ended. The Dispatch, an outspokenly Democratic organ, had started as a daily, then reduced its frequency to semi-weekly. 521 |
