The First Edition

Seminole During the Boom

James T. and Sadie Franklin get Married in the Producer's Office

Original Seminole Producer Office, 316 E Oak

1920's Producer Paper Boys

The Birth of The Seminole Producer   
and the Jackson years

by James T. Jackson  

Tuesday, March 1, 1927, Miss Sadie Franklin and I gave birth to the bellering brat in a concrete block building on East Oak Street. Its birth was painful and plagued with trouble and uncertainty.

Certainly nobody, least of all Sadie and I, expected the wobbly little critter to survive. We have discussed the question of making it a weekly, semi-weekly or daily. Sadie made the decision when she said, “Let’s make it a daily; we’ll go broke and get out of here quicker that way.”

The merchant who bought the largest ad in the first issue said he wanted to help us, but a daily couldn’t possibly succeed in Seminole.

Seminole had a daily newspaper. As a weekly, semi-weekly and lastly as a daily, it had survived only four months.

Tuesday, March 1, 1927, was dark, damp, and dismal. On the morning of that first publication day the Producer didn’t have a subscriber and not an inch of advertising had been sold. Midmorning L. W. Kitchens, superintendent of schools, came to the office and paid for a year’s subscription, and the Producer went to press that day with a circulation of exactly one.

One printer was on hand. By wire and mail we had hired another printer, an editor, an advertising man, and a linotype operator. The operator arrived at midnight Monday. The editor, bogged down in the mud between Ardmore and Seminole, arrived after the first issue had gone to press. The other two didn’t reach Seminole until later in the week.

It was not by our choosing that Sadie and I had come to Seminole. We had sold the printing plant in Kansas to an adventurer who had more courage than judgment. He had moved it to the wild and wooly oil boom town.

There was not a foot of paving in the county. There were few side­walks in Seminole. The streets were a sea of mud. There was little law and no order. The city water supply from two shallow wells was utterly inadequate. Electric and gas service faltered and often failed; telephone service was almost non-existent.

Thousands of boomers milled about the streets and the town’s most prosperous business establishments, the two “49er” dance halls. We stood in long lines to get into the post office, the banks, the freight and express offices and the cafes. Cot houses flourished as oil workers slept in shifts.

February 11 the adventurer who had established the Seminole Morning Tribune gave up the struggle as hopeless and turned the plant back to me, and the Tribune became nothing more than a memory.

I made numerous efforts to sell the plant, nothing down and liberal terms. It was mortgaged for more than its worth, and I found no buyer. Pat Stewart, the printer retained when the Tribune folded, and I were doing some job printing for cash so we could continue to eat at the Chinese restaurant next door.

After a few days I became somewhat acclimated, and decided it might not be too bad after all. After hours of waiting my turn at the telephone office, I reached Sadie by telephone in Chicago and asked her to come to Seminole. I met her at the Rock Island station with a pair of rubber boots in my hand. She wore them for three months.

Perhaps the fact that we wanted to “go broke and get out of there” accounted in part for the Producer’s success. Anyhow, the Producer was soon swinging with both fists.

Its first big victory came early in 1928 at the end of a crusade to clean up the county’s law enforcement agencies. Eleven deputy sheriffs were dismissed and three constables were asked to resign. Two resigned, the third was ousted after giving us our first libel suit.

Rather rapidly we acquired several such suits for a total of some $265,000. But the Producer was winning most of its battles, was growing in prestige, in circulation and in advertising. The job printing department, which brought in more dollars than the newspaper in those early months, became a side­line.

The town was moving forward too. In mid-March 1927, Governor Henry S. Johnston appointed an entire new city administration and school board. Under the new leadership of Mayor J. N. Harber and School Board President George Killingsworth, a new day came to Seminole.

Over the years, I have formed one very definite conclusion. There are four things that a community must have if it is to grow and prosper. If it has these four, all the other necessary adjuncts to community life will follow. It if doesn’t have all four, it withers and dies.

On the spiritual and cultural sides, it must have churches in numbers, and it must have good schools. On the business side, it must have banks with a deep-rooted interest in the community. To inform and enlighten the people on matters of public interest, it must have at least one aggressive and fearless newspaper. Sadie and I gave Seminole the newspaper.  

James T. and Sadie Jackson owned and operated the Seminole Producer from 1927 until 1946.