16 The Silver Queen THE ONLY public disclosure made as to the new ownership of The Tribune, at the time of the announced sale was the appearance of the name of Perry S. Heath in the masthead as publisher and general manager. J u s t how long the general public was unaware that the owners were Senator Kearns and his partner, David Keith, is difficult to ascertain. The law requiring publication of a sworn statement of ownership and circulation did not become operative until October, 1913. But the Kearns-Keith ownership was disclosed publicly long before that. Some individuals knew at the time of the transaction that the purchasers were Kearns and Keith and many more suspected it. Within ten days after the announcement of the sale the editor of the Challis, Idaho, Messenger published an item identifying Kearns as the purchaser and adding that the new editor, Heath, was "not to be compared" with Mr. Goodwin, "one of the ablest editorial writers in the world." l But a few days later the weekly Truth, which prided itself on being an authority on both revealed and unrevealed political information in Salt Lake and Utah, published a special dispatch under an Indianapolis, Indiana, dateline and credited to The Chicago Tribune which said in part: "Indiana Republicans say they are convinced Perry Heath bought The Salt Lake Tribune in order to pave a way to the United States Senate. . . ." 2 Obviously the editor of Truth believed at that time that Heath was the purchaser, for the stock-in-trade of the publica-
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