John L. Morrison - Early Years

Early Years

Morrison was born in Tabor, Iowa, the first of five children by Joshua L. Morrison and Martha Abigail Gardner. The Morrisons were a puritanical Christian family. Every morning, after breakfast, they held a family worship, and John and his siblings were all taught to abstain from alcohol, smoking and gambling.

After graduating from Tabor College, Morrison went to work teaching school in Western, Nebraska. While in Western, he published the first Ripsaw newspaper. He is also believed to have published similar papers, or at least worked in the journalism field, in Missouri and Montana, as well as Crete, Friend and DeWitt, Nebraska.

From 1889 to 1890, Morrison was in Kansas City, where he worked as a police reporter for the Kansas City Daily Times.

He came to Duluth in 1893, and that fall he was hired as a reporter for the Duluth Evening Herald. After seven months at the Herald, he joined the paper’s new organized labor department as an editor, attending and reporting on labor functions for two years.

Morrison became a regularly elected honorary member of the Trades Assembly, and, in the spring of 1895, was asked to speak at an executive meeting about the boycott of the Imperial Mill’s flour products. He spoke critically of B. C. Church, president of the mill. According to Morrison, that made Church “very angry, as autocrats usually are when a commoner criticizes them.” Church allegedly demanded Morrison be discharged from the Herald, threatening to cancel his advertising in the paper. Morrison’s employment at the Herald was, indeed, swiftly terminated.

Just as swiftly, Morrison was hired as editor of the labor department at the Duluth News Tribune. He held the position until News Tribune manager A. E. Chantler’s contract expired in January 1896. The new manager, A. F. Hammond, quickly fired Morrison, refusing, according to Morrison, to give any reason.

Morrison took an active part in Henry Truelsen’s successful 1896 campaign for Duluth mayor. Truelsen’s candidacy was opposed by both daily papers and corporate interests, which strongly backed conservative candidate Charles Allen.

In 1896, Morrison also briefly published a paper called the Duluth Citizen. After Truelsen’s election, however, Morrison left Duluth, returning to Kansas City. What he did there and how long he stayed is unknown, but his consistent listing in the Duluth city directory suggests it was a short move.

Over the next 10 years, Morrison changed careers frequently and lived mostly in hotel rooms. The city directory listed him as a “correspondent” for the Herald in 1897. The next year he was listed as a travel agent, and, by 1900, he was a “correspondent” again, but no employer is mentioned.

During the early 1900s, Morrison was listed in the directory as a reporter, travel agent, real estate man, broker, secretary of the Dividend Development Company, messenger for William Mies and, from 1908 to 1910, a “prospector.” Following that, his listing reads either “mining” or “mines and mining” through 1916. What exactly Morrison’s involvement was with the mining industry throughout those years is unclear, although one account in the Duluth Herald reports he was “engaged in newspaper work for mining journals.”

In 1916, Morrison returned to publishing with his first and only book, The Booster Book: West Duluth in 1916.