Highs and lows: Log Cabin struggled and survived

(This is the fourth in a series of articles as the Log Cabin Democrat reaches its 100th anniversary as a daily newspaper.)

To a non-newspaper person, the intricacies and complexities of putting out a daily publication and making it profitable is generally not known. Neither is the enormous expense of producing a newspaper and the critical element of timing - day after day.

The four basic elements of creating a newspaper are news, advertising, circulation and production. Two of these bring in money, one much more than the other. Two do not produce revenue. But there has to be competency and efficiency in the news department and the production department right along with the sale of ads and the income from subscribers and newsstands.

Newspapering was simpler in 1908 when Frank Robins Sr. launched the daily edition of the Log Cabin Democrat. He had four years of fulltime experience working under his step-father, J.W. Underhill, who died in 1906, and two years on his own. And he had been Conway's mayor since he was 24. Commercial printing was already a part of the operation, and this would continue another 72 years - until 1980 when the Log Cabin Democrat and Conway Printing Company were divided into separate businesses by the Robins family.

Frank Robins Jr., was a toddler when the daily Log Cabin began. He grew up quickly and was often around the newspaper then drifted toward the business segment of the operation. His father referred to him as "my partner." This became more pronounced as Frank Sr. put his focus on the news operation and Frank Jr. on the business and mechanical operations.

.story-ad {

width: 310px;

float: left;

margin: 0 10px 10px 0;

padding: 4px;

}

- Advertisement -

OAS_AD('x22');

To comprehend this link of newspapers and commercial printing that was common throughout the nation in small towns, it helps to remember the machines and supplies that were on hand. It just made sense to utilize them as much as possible, whether it was producing the day's newspaper or printing an order of envelopes for a local business.

Conway had other commercial print shops, one or two of which also produced weekly newspapers until after World War II.

By the end of the 1920s, the Log Cabin was solid as a business. Frank Robins Sr. was a "civic leader" in the fullest sense - mayor, city council, school board then he was heavily involved in a radical new venture - the creation of a public utility operation owned by the city but separate from city hall and the elected officials. Conway Corporation was born in 1929 just a few months before the disastrous stock market crash that precipitated the Great Depression. Frank Robins Sr. was elected the first chairman of Conway Corporation.

Frank Robins, one of the three, and Conway Corporation would be closely tied for six decades.

The Log Cabin struggled during the Depression. All newspapers did, and some didn't survive. Advertising dwindled. Many subscribers relied on the paper for their daily information but found they had no money to pay for subscriptions. It is anyone's guess as to how many readers were given silent free rides by Robins, father and son. Occasionally someone told one of them, "I want to keep the Cabin coming, but I just can't pay for it."

Of all the glorious traditions and instances of brave and dedicated journalists, lost for posterity are the numerous times a reader paid with some fresh eggs, a sack of purple-hull peas or a jar of honey.

At the bleakest time of the Depression, the Log Cabin's printers came to the Boss, their term for Frank Sr., and told him they would forego their pay for the time being, that they knew he didn't have the money to meet the payroll.

Neither Frank Robins Sr. nor Frank Robins Jr., forgot that day and those printers, most of whom also had families to feed.

There was a trickle of advertising to the Log Cabin all through the Depression. National ads came by mail from cigarette companies especially. For Robins, father and son, a package in the mail from advertising representatives of Lucky Strike, Camel, Chesterfield, Kool and others was a most welcomed sight. World War II in essence ended the Depression.

A change in America's lifestyle had gradually taken place in the 1920s and 1930s, and it would alter the newspapers of the land considerably. Frank Robins Sr. saw it take place. Food and eating all across the land got better.

For the Log Cabin and other newspapers, this resulted in coverage of activities bringing knowledge and methods of better nutrition to woman, housewives. These were home demonstration clubs, later to be called extension clubs. The Log Cabin covered these activities and eventually launched a food page and food section on a weekly basis.

Frank Robins Sr. commented in 1938, "I might talk at length of how the quality and tastefulness of this country food has improved during the past two decades as a result of home instruction and home demonstration work."

Indirectly another development was the growth of grocery advertising in the Log Cabin and other newspapers. Another Arkansas newspaper owner commented, "You must have the big four in ads - grocery, new car, utilities and cigarettes - if you're going to make it."

Frank Sr. and Frank Jr. saw changes approaching when the 1940s began, along with the war. They saw potential in printing. One venture was to acquire the struggling Van Buren County Democrat at Clinton, and it was produced in the Conway printing plant for several years. By then the business was Conway Printing Company, with the Log Cabin a product.

Much commercial printing came out of state agencies at Little Rock, and Mary Virginia Robins Ferguson, daughter of Frank Jr., recalled "holding copy" as a teenager for her father while proofs were checked on the exhaustive legislative minutes that were a regular printing task. This was two-person proofreading, one reading aloud from the furnished copy and the other checking the proofs from type that had been set.

Frank Robins Jr., after his father died in 1949, worked at keeping pace with technological changes imprinting and the arrival of offset printing that would eventually push the family "hot lead" process aside.

Conway began growing. More people and more business establishments combined to mean more income and more responsibility for the Log Cabin, with Frank Robins III operating the business after his father died in 1959.

Still in the picture was Mrs. Lyde Robins, the widow of Frank Sr., the mother of Frank Jr., who kept in close touch with both the newspaper and the printing operation.

A major development was in 1967, when an offset printing press was installed for the Log Cabin. It replaced an eight-page flatbed letterpress that had been bought just after World War II from the Jonesboro Sun. A teenaged Frank III went to Jonesboro with a printer to look at the press before the deal was closed.

Close behind the conversion to offset for the Log Cabin, Interstate 40 came to Conway, and close behind it came the Arkansas River navigation development. Conway and Faulkner County were moving, and the Log Cabin stepped lively to match the pace with an expanded staff and the addition of numerous photographs in both news and advertising material.