History, Winnebago County, Wisconsin: Its cities, towns, resources, people

              1206b HISTORY OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY.
sold out to C. G. Finney, Jr., and the firm became Finney & Davis. In the spring of 1870 Mr. Finney sold out to Mr. Davis, who conducted it with John Hicks as local editor until October 13, 1870, when Mr. Hicks and Thomas S. Allen, of Madison, whose term of secretary of state had expired the January previous, bought out the concern.
In April, 1873, the Northwestern absorbed the Oshkosh Journal, then published by Rounds & Morley. The Northwestern, the con¬ solidation and embodiment of four of the leading newspapers started in Oshkosh. Later General Allen retired from the paper, and with Mr. Julius Weidner formed the firm of Allen & Weidner, publishing the Wisconsin Telegraph.
The Northwestern today is owned and published by the Hicks Printing Company. The recent history of the Northwestern can best be stated in an article which appeared in Newspaperdom February 20, 1902, and which is as follows: ^'From an old- fashioned drum-cylinder press turned with a crank to a double- deck perfecting press with a capacity of 12,000 sixteen pages an hour in the business life of one man is quite unusual. But this is the experience of Col. Hicks, of the'Oshkosh (Wis.) North¬ western, one of the liveliest papers printed in a small town any¬ where in the United States. Col. Hicks left college in 1867 to go to work on the Northwestern and he has been there ever since, excepting four years, from 1889 to 1893, when he served as United States Minister to Peru. He was present at the birth of the Daily Northwestern, January 6, 1868, and saw the paper printed on a Taylor ^ country cylinder, ^ pushed by a stalwart Irishman, and grinding out papers at the rate of 600 per hour. Last week the Hicks Printing Company, publishers of the Northwestern, signed a contract with the Potter Printing Press Company, of Plainfield, N. J., for a fine two-deck angle-bar press with a guaranteed capacity of 12,000 ten, twelve or sixteen-page papers, or 24,000 eight-page papers an hour. Since 1894 the North¬ western has been printed on a Goss perfecting press, with a capacity of 10,000 eight-page pajiers an hour, but the increase in its business called for a faster machine and one which will print more pages. The Northwestern has a model plant in its own building, djevoted entirely to the newspaper, with no job printing attachment. It owns its own telegraph wire, 122 miles long, connecting with the le^^sed wire of the Associated Press at Milwaukee, and receives the leased wire service in its own office.