About The Helena independent. (Helena, Mont.) 1875-1943
Helena, Mont. (1875-1943)

The Helena Independent

The Kerley, McQuaid, LaCroix & Company published both the Daily Independent   (beginning on March 22, 1874) and the Helena Weekly Independent   (beginning in August 1875). The four-page Daily measured 16 x 23 inches and consisted of six columns; the paper moved to Helena from Deer Lodge where it began in 1867 as the Weekly Independent .  The eight-page, five-column Helena Independent  was a weekly tabloid measuring 12 x 21 inches.  It documented Helena’s earliest days as the Territorial capital (the capital had moved to Helena from Virginia City in 1875).  The territorial seal and motto, “Oro y plata,” appeared in the masthead of both newspapers, promoting Montana’s mineral riches.

Founded in 1875, the Independent from its earliest years declared its loyalty to the Democratic Party.  By 1879, Alexander M. Woolfolk, Sr. joined McQuaid and LaCroix as a publisher.  In 1883, a prominent attorney and real estate man, John Selby Neill, arrived in Helena and soon took over management of the Daily Independent.  Neill would remain faithful to the political ambitions of Democrat William Andrews Clark, the copper mining millionaire, who battled with copper king Marcus Daly of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company.  Neill lost all editorial independence through his reliance on the financial resources of Clark, who effectively used the newspaper to secure the capital for Helena and to promote his own appointment by the Montana legislature to the U.S. Senate.  In 1902, Neill finally sold all of his interests in theHelena Independent to Clark.  

In 1913, a group of Democratic activists, led by Lewis Penwell and Cornelius B. Nolan (a former attorney general and a partner of U.S. Senator Thomas Walsh), purchased the Helena Independent and incorporated the Independent Publishing Company.  Its principals included Edward Carson Day (a prominent Helena attorney), Massena Bullard (an attorney), and A.J. Davidson (an early Helena merchant and fast friend of William Andrews Clark.)  One of the new stockholders included a Nebraska journalist named Will A. Campbell, who had learned the trade as a promoter for the Great Northern Railway and a stint with the Denver Post, known as “the yellowest of yellow journals.”  Campbell quickly allied himself with Democratic conservatives with ties to the Anaconda Copper Mining Company and began attacking the Butte Socialists and Wobblies (Industrial Workers of the World).  During World War I, Campbell used the newspaper to fuel anti-German sentiment which led to the banning of the German language from schools, churches, and the burning of German books.  Before the war, Montana was home to nine German language newspapers; by the war’s end none remained.  Campbell was an active member of the Montana Council of Defense which promoted and helped to pass the Montana Sedition Act in 1918, which led to the harassment of law-abiding citizens and labor unions and the triumph of corporate interests in Montana journalism over the next forty years.  Campbell remained editor of the Helena Independent into the 1930s.

Provided by: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT