The Ripsaw
Morrison’s Duluth Ripsaw debuted on March 24, 1917. Issues were published every other Saturday, although on more than one occasion Morrison was overwhelmed by the task of producing the paper by himself, and took three weeks to finish a new issue, working almost entirely by himself.
“The Ripsaw is a genuine one-man sawmill,” he wrote in the July 13, 1918 editorial. “The entire work, snaking out dead-heads, filing the saw, piling the product, getting it to the market, even loading and billing it, falls on one man. It often takes 18 hours a day and seven days a week to do all that half way creditably, to say nothing of brilliantly.”
Morrison’s specialty was digging into the “unholy and undesirable alliance” between lawmakers and lawbreakers. During the Ripsaw’s first year, Duluth Chief of Police Robert McKercher and City Auditor “King” Odin Halden were both ousted from their positions after being labeled crooked by Morrison.
Read more about this topic: John L. Morrison