"The story of 39 years in Hawaii, and the contributions of W.R. Farrington as editor, publisher and citizen" By Riley H. Allen Editor of The Star-Bulletin., (Reprinted from the Twenty-fifth Anniversary edition of The Honolulu Star-Bulletin, July 1, 1937.)
Wallace R. Farrington
Newspaperman
by Riley H. Allen
Editor of The Star-Bulletin
On Hawaii's history and on newspaper history in Hawaii has been imprinted forever the indelible mark of a notable leader and great citizen.
Wallace Rider Farrington is not with us to celebrate this quarter century of newspaper achievement. But his cheerful, indomitable spirit goes marching on with his beloved "Star-Bulletin Family" and so does the rare quality of his journalistic ability.
I had the privilege of association with him for nearly 30 years. It is entirely fitting that in this 25th anniversary edition, his career as a newspaperman should be briefly reviewed.
Most of that career was in Hawaii. Born at Orono, Maine, May 3, 1871 he turned to the newspaper field even as a student. He was editor of the little Bridgton academy's periodical, the Students' Journal, and business manager of the Maine state college Cadet.
Graduating in 1891 from the state college, he became night editor of the Bangor, Maine, News; associate editor of the Phelps Publishing Co., at Springfield, Mass., and in 1894 a reporter on the New York Commercial News.
It was in New York that he met Henry N. Castle of Honolulu. Mr. Castle was the son of S.N. Castle and brother of W.R., George P. and James B. Castle. The Castle family then controlled the Pacific Commercial Advertiser, the morning paper of Honolulu. They were looking for a newspaperman with mainland training, and Henry Castle, introduced to young Farrington by a Maine man who had lived in Honolulu, liked him instantly and hired him quickly.
He First Came to Honolulu in 1894
Farrington arrived in Honolulu November 22, 1894. On January 2, 1895, he became editor of the Advertiser.
On August 4, 1897, he resigned the editorship of the Advertiser and with his young wife left Honolulu. They did not intend to return, though he recognized even then the unusual possibilities of this mid-Pacific land for a creative newspaper work.
But a year later they were back in Hawaii. A.V. Gear, one of the controlling owners of the Evening Bulletin, had been impressed with the ability and industry of the young man from Maine, and had been urging him to return.
He came back to Hawaii as editor of the Evening Bulletin and through the next few years began to acquire stock in the corporation.
It was a severe struggle. In later years, he used to remark. "The old Evening Bulletin lifted itself by its boot straps." The fact was that Wallace R. Farrington lifted it by its boot straps. The town was small, the newspaper field was limited. The old Evening Bulletin had only the meagerest of mechanical equipment. Its staff was, at the beginning, "two men and a boy."
It occupied parts of two old frame buildings in an alley off King street, back of the site now occupied by the Kauikeolani building (Hawaiian Trust Co.).
There, from 1898 to 1910, Farrington steadily developed the newspaper in which he saw the elements of later stability and magnitude.
The Beginning of a Long Association
In late January, 1905, I was holding down a precarious and ill-paid job on the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, a morning newspaper. This was long before its membership in big Hearst chain. It was then owned by the late John L. Wilson, U.S, senator of the state.
It wasn't much of a job. I had graduated from the University of Chicago a few weeks previously and headed west to my old home city. I was a feature writer and fill-in reporter, making barely enough to eat on, and with prospects that imminent office economies would eliminate even this small position.
On the bulletin board in the newsroom one day appeared a notice saying that the Evening Bulletin of Honolulu wanted a reporter. Anyone who desired the job should get in touch with E.S. Gill, an attorney of the city.
I read the notice once, pulled it down, stuck it in my pocket (so no one else would see it) and hurried over to Attorney Gill's office.
Mr. Gill had been an attorney in Honolulu and city editor of the Honolulu Republican, a lively belligerent little paper that had lived a turbulent life and died a troubled death (of financial starvation). Thereupon Mr. Gill had gone to Settle to practice law.
Editor Farrington of the Evening Bulletin needed a reporter. He wanted one picked for him by a man who knew the Hawaii newspapers field and island conditions. So he wrote Gill and Gill posted notices in the Seattle newsrooms.
I was the first man to reach Gill and somehow convinced him that I was a reporter and a good one. The cold truth was that I was little more than a "cub," but I needed a job and, having recently been reading Joseph Conrad, I was afire with a desire to see strange, faraway and tropic places.
In early February, I sailed from San Francisco on the old Pacific liner Korea, later the Korea Maru of the T.K.K. and N.Y.K. Japanese lines.
Evening Bulletin in the First Decade
The Korea Maru docked one bright February morning. With the last of my money, I hired a hack for 25 cents at the Pacific Mail dock and rode myself and my one valise of personal belongings to the Evening Bulletin office.
By that time the Bulletin had acquired a narrow frontage on King street. My hack stopped in front of the door. I got out my one valise, went inside. I was directed through the narrow, countered business office to a rear door. Inside the rear room, crowded with unassorted furniture, I saw a young man with already thinning reddish hair, sitting shirtsleeved at a high old fashioned rolltop desk. In one hand was a galley proof, in the other a poised pencil.
He glanced up, an interrogatory smile on his pleasant, florid and slightly freckled, keen face. I told him who I was. He said, "That's good. Glad to have you here. Get any stories off the boat?"
Fortunately, I had picked up some news items and written them on ship's stationery. He hastily ran over the batch.
"You've been writing for bigger papers, Allen. This stuff is all right, but this is a small paper and a small town--yet. News that looks small to you is important to us. A steamer arrival, now is good news. Some of these stories are worth a lot more than you've given them. This one about the storm smashing a hatch, for instance." And he went on with brief, incisive comments.
Evening Bulletin in the First Decade
The Korea Maru docked one bright February morning. With the last of my money, I hired a hack for 25 cents at the Pacific Mail dock and rode myself and my one valise of personal belongings to the Evening Bulletin office.
By that time the Bulletin had acquired a narrow frontage on King street. My hack stopped in front of the door. I got out my one valise, went inside. I was directed through the narrow, countered business office to a rear door. Inside the rear room, crowded with unassorted furniture, I saw a young man with already thinning reddish hair, sitting shirtsleeved at a high old fashioned rolltop desk. In one hand was a galley proof, in the other a poised pencil.
He glanced up, an interrogatory smile on his pleasant, florid and slightly freckled, keen face. I told him who I was. He said, "That's good. Glad to have you here. Get any stories off the boat?"
Fortunately, I had picked up some news items and written them on ship's stationery. He hastily ran over the batch.
"You've been writing for bigger papers, Allen. This stuff is all right, but this is a small paper and a small town--yet. News that looks small to you is important to us. A steamer arrival, now is good news. Some of these stories are worth a lot more than you've given them. This one about the storm smashing a hatch, for instance." And he went on with brief, incisive comments.
He Learned to Be a Master of Detail
Those were years when he learned to be a master of detail, but not to let detail master him. He never hesitated to handle detail. For many years he carried a large part of the minute items of the newspaper and printing business. He never felt that any task at the Bulletin or, later, The Star-Bulletin, office was "too picayune" for him, beneath his dignity or below his ability. He worked all day at high speed and often took papers and books, particularly reading for editorial use, home with him.
But as rapidly as the growing facilities of his business permitted, he passed detail on to others, delegating responsibility and organizing production.
Even so, he always kept his eye on detail. Knowing every process and phase of the business, he knew how to supervise. He was a stickler for accuracy. He read the completed paper as he used to read galley proofs--with a speeding and discerning eye. He was able to with a speeding and discerning eye. He was able to keep larger purposes plain in view even while supervising with utmost care the detail of present operations.
Preeminently he was both an exacting and an inspiring newspaper chief.
Those who in later years marveled at the apparent ease with which he handled the endless duties and ceremonials of the governor's office could have found the answer in the training of his early newspaper years.
The business office then was also the general sales and printing office. Charles G. Bockus, now with the Hilo Tribune Hearld, was cashier and later business manager. He could--and did when necessity arose--step back into the composing room and run a linotype, for he had been a machinist and linotype operator in the states--somewhere in Pennsylvania, I believe--before setting out for fame and fortune in the Klondike and later deciding that he would find those fickle jades more easily in the comparatively warmer Hawaii.
I remained with the Evening Bulletin as a reporter until the fall of 1905, when family circumstances called me to Seattle. I returned in September, 1910, bringing with me a bride and much more knowledge of newspaper work than I had had five years before.
In Seattle I had gone back to the Post-Intelligencer. But through letters Farrington and I had kept in fairly close touch. In 1910 I wrote him that I would like to return and he offered me the city editorship. We sailed on the old Sierra of the Oceanic line and got here September 16, 1910, to renew a connection with one newspaper that has remained unbroken.
Honolulu had grown somewhat in size by 1910 and the newspaper field had grown, too. But there was no change in general newspaper lineup. The Pacific Commercial Advertiser was still the only morning paper, and The Hawaiian Star and The Evening Bulletin were hot competitors in the evening field.
The Evening Bulletin was a much stronger paper than when I had left it. In all departments were evident the drive, the vigor and the confidence of an alert and a skilled leader. Its mechanical equipment had substantially improved. The battered press driven by an odorous and occasionally flaming gas engine had been succeeded by a flatbed Duplex--which, by the way, is still in operation at the Tribune-Hearld in Hilo.
The story of this press is symptomatic of the man who was at the helm of the paper. Raking and scraping together every possible dollar, Farrington had bought and installed the press in 1906. The press was then a tremendous mechanical advance over anything in Hawaii. Farrington always believed in good equipment--"the best and fastest you can get."
And when, on April 18, 1906, the great earthquake and fire laid San Francisco in ruins, The Star-Bulletin had the fastest press in town it speed extra after extra to the eager buyers in the streets.
Aloha, I feel that this is of vital importance to understanding of how an appointed governor and a congressional delegate worked for the Na Kanaka and all the things that can go wrong. It is of my opinion for it is important that we have hearings in Hawaii for the 'Akaka Bill' because at this time all history players (dead souls) are the voices in congress
Replies
If we let the US continue it's genocidal intent of our Na Kanaka and let their ancestral lands be squashed--it's because we didn't speak up against the fools of today. We stood silently and complimented the fool and gave him kudos for reasons that is beyond my comprehension. I believe that is what stupid politics are built on. Our families deserves better!
One important concern is the plebiscite: We should not ever have a plebiscite in Hawaii that is conducted by the US governing entity.
Another concern of my grandparents Auld and Mitchel was the 'nuclear' in the Pacific.
Do not let the 'family' be replaced by academic exercise or 'fool' playing. The natural imprints of family practices will carry the gifts of our ancestors.
The Greatest Legacy of Prince Kuhio is the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act of 1921. Prince Kuhio did every thing that he could to secure a Land Base for his people under the laws of the United States. Sadly Prince Kuhio passed six months after the passing of the Rehabilitation Act. After the passage of the Act, Prince Kuhio wanted to retire as a Delegate to Congress so that he could become the first Director of the Act. So he could explain to his people the Act.
Prince Kuhio himself wanted a get a homestead on Molokai and show his people the working of "Aina Hoopulaplua" to the Act. Remember that many of his people at the time of the passage of the Act were new of the workings of the governmental ways of the United States. An Indegenous Native people who were deeply hurt over the lost of their Indigenous Native country, the Hawaiian Kingdom.
Since the passage of Prince Kuhio our people have gone thru alot. Many, many of our people and those who are not of our Blood of our people have worked very hard to correct the wrongs of the overthrow of the lawful government of the Hawaiian Kingdom. I am just one of many.
Like the World, Hawaii is changing. We the Hawaiian people from those of the purest of the Blood to those in Spirit have a Golden Opportunity before us.
The Second Legacy of Prince Kuhio is the founding of the Hawaiian Civic Club Association with the founding of the Honolulu Hawaiian Civic Club. Recently I was invited to be a member of the Ka Lei Maile Alii Hawaiian Civic Club. This past Thursday I attended my first meeting of "My Hawaiian Civic Club" with Great Pride, Honor and Hope.
Ke Lei Maile Alii Hawaiian Civic Club is one of the two working groups of the "NO TREATY OF ANNNEXATION" Memorials. The other Working Group is HIAA. HPACH is member of HIAA.
Working together with KLMAHCC and HIAA with the "NO TREATY OF ANNEXATION" Memorials we will not let the Lagacies of Prince Kuhio be lost in time. As each of our Alii all left our people with their Legacies.
Long Live The Hawaiian Kingdom, o Pomai, Hawaiian Kingdom National Royalest 1993