About Barre evening enterprise. (Barre, Vt.) 1898-1898
Barre, Vt. (1898-1898)

Barre Evening Enterprise, Barre Evening Telegram and Barre Morning Telegram

In 1898, William F. Scott, publisher of the weekly Barre Enterprise, started the second daily paper in Barre, Vermont. Edited by Henry C. Whitaker, it appeared as the Barre Evening Enterprise for about a month. After Whitaker and others purchased the paper, it became the Barre Evening Telegram. The paper presented national and regional news, gained in part from its Associated Press membership, as well as local news. Editorial commentary often accompanied short items presented under the heading “Sparks from the Granite City.” Barre was the center of Vermont’s thriving granite industry, with a significant population of Scottish and Italian immigrants, and the Telegram reported on the granite business, union and labor issues, and immigrant activities.

For a very brief period during Whitaker’s tenure, the Telegram included an Italian language section, “Parte Italiana.” Although only one issue survives in library collections, the Italian sections were apparently published from December 27, 1898 to January 2, 1899. Whitaker invited Salavatore Pallavicini to compile the section for the city’s rapidly expanding Italian colony. Pallavicini was an interesting choice, as he was active in the transnational Italian anarchist network. Sources report that he published anarchist Pietro Gori’s play Primo Maggio and a newspaper in Barre in 1896, represented New York’s Italian Typographical Union at an 1897 rally celebrating the assassination of a Spanish politician, supported striking textile workers in New Jersey during the summer of 1898, and contributed articles to La Question Sociale, a leading anarchist paper.

In the first issue of “Parte Italiana,” Pallavicini promised that the news would be presented in a neutral manner, but in the January 2, 1899 issue, he filled most of the half page section with an article in which he wondered if 1899 would be the year that workers would rise against tyrants. The Telegram ended the Italian section without comment, although Italian advertisements for local businesses ran for several more weeks. Later that month, the Telegram ran advertisements for a lecture series by the anarchist and activist Emma Goldman. Pallavicini was her host, and she remembered him as “a cultivated man, well-informed not only on the international labor movement, but also on the new tendencies in Italian art and letters.” In 1900, Pallavicini left the United States for France. Newspapers and police reports implicated him in the 1901 assassination of Italy’s King Umberto I.

A group of local businessmen purchased the Telegram in January 1904, and with Rev. Walter R. Davenport as editor, used it to oppose Vermont’s efforts to license liquor sales, reversing the paper’s previous support for a local license option. In November, the Telegram suspended operations, and Davenport blamed fierce competition and lack of capital. In December, he announced that the paper had been sold to two experienced Boston newspapermen, William G. Bradford and Alexander Q. Miller. In June 1905, they began issuing the Telegram as a morning paper to avoid competing with Barre’s other evening paper, the Barre Daily Times. This strategy failed to improve the Telegram’s financial situation, and a final issue appeared in August.

Provided by: University of Vermont