{ "id": "news-1908-01-10-5", "title": "A. M. Lara proposes a trade mark for the Bend Commercial Club, January 1908", "publisher": "The Bend Bulletin (weekly), 1908-01-10, image 5; Historic Oregon Newspapers", "sourceClass": "primary", "url": "https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088235/1908-01-10/ed-1/seq-5/", "accessedOn": "2026-09-12", "notes": "A week before the prize notice this archive already holds, the paper reports the committee's appointment and names A. M. Lara as the man who proposed the idea. It gives his brief: a design about the size of a dollar, printed on members' letterheads and envelopes, over the words \"Member of the Bend Commercial Club. All Inquiries Cheerfully Answered.\"", "record": "https://bendemblem.com/archive/news-1908-01-10-5/", "evidence": { "id": "news-1908-01-10-5", "kind": "history", "date": "1908-01-10", "summary": "A week before the $10 prize notice, the Bulletin reports A. M. Lara proposing a trade mark for the Bend Commercial Club — dollar-sized, for letterheads, over the words \"All Inquiries Cheerfully Answered\".", "findings": [ "A committee was appointed at the club's first regular meeting to secure suggestions and drawings for \"a design to be used as a sort of trade mark for the club\".", "\"A. M. Lara proposed this idea\" — he is the author of the proposal, not only the chair who held the sketches.", "His brief: a design about the size of a dollar, printed on all members' letterheads and envelopes.", "Beneath the design were to be the words \"Member of the Bend Commercial Club. All Inquiries Cheerfully Answered.\"", "This is a week earlier than the $10 prize notice of January 17, 1908 already in this archive, and is the meeting that notice came out of.", "The size differs between the two notices: \"about the size of a dollar\" here, reducible \"to the size of a 25-cent piece\" in the prize notice." ], "limitations": [ "Nothing connects this proposal to the emblem published in July 1912. A widened search — medallion, trade mark, best design, design contest — across every cached page of 1908 to 1912 finds no winner, no adopted design and no follow-up of any kind.", "No drawing accompanies the report and none has been located.", "A. M. Lara's own papers have never been found. He held every submitted sketch and this page strengthens the case for looking for them; it does not locate them.", "The legend's resemblance to the Emblem Club's later purpose is a resemblance. No document links the two." ], "objects": [ { "path": "archive/online-research/2026-09-11-tier-a/1908-01-10-5.pdf", "sha256": "a63cd5c39b30a8937b56dfea5b8bd3d8111cc45fd3f2b3776dcca6706db61a0e", "url": "https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088235/1908-01-10/ed-1/seq-5/", "accessedOn": "2026-09-12", "role": "Received source bytes" } ], "images": [ { "original": "archive/online-research/2026-09-11-tier-a/1908-01-10-5.pdf", "page": 1, "box": [ 668, 372, 328, 492 ], "title": "“A. M. Lara proposed this idea”, January 10, 1908.", "rights": "The Bend Bulletin · Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon; documentary reproduction, excluded from the project artwork license.", "color": true, "width": 1000, "render": "PyMuPDF at 144 dpi; JPEG quality 94", "sha256": "753d8d8c0150d8a7070e8e93b24691f73c15782ab5da8e1403cbaba3e817b655", "from": "archive/online-research/2026-09-11-tier-a/news-1908-01-10-5-page-1.jpg" } ], "family": null, "origin": null, "sourceIds": [], "review": { "status": "image-reviewed", "method": "Complete source page and selected crop inspected visually; OCR used only to locate the passage.", "reviewedOn": "2026-09-12" } }, "measurement": [], "appearances": [], "appearanceLeads": [], "exhibit": { "id": "news-1908-01-10-5", "title": "The size of a dollar", "intro": "The moment somebody in Bend first proposed a device for the town's club — and it has a name on it.", "body": [ "This archive already held the prize notice — the Bend Commercial Club offering $10 for the best idea for “a medallion or sort of trade mark”, sketches to A. M. Lara by January 31. That is January 17. This is January 10, a week earlier, and it is the meeting the notice came out of.", "What it adds is the authorship of the idea and the shape of the brief. Lara did not merely chair the committee and hold the sketches: he proposed the thing. And he proposed it with particulars — about the size of a dollar, for letterheads and envelopes, with a legend beneath it that reads like an invitation to write to Bend and ask.", "The legend is the part worth sitting with. “All Inquiries Cheerfully Answered.” Four and a half years later the Emblem Club would exist to answer inquiries about Bend, its founder would print forty thousand booklets to attract them, and its members would swear an oath to keep it up until a hundred thousand people lived here. In January 1908 a general merchant at a club meeting asked for a mark the size of a dollar with that sentence under it.", "None of which makes it the emblem's ancestor. The searching has been done and the answer is a negative: no winner, no adopted design and no follow-up is reported anywhere in this paper between January 1908 and the emblem's publication in July 1912, on a vocabulary widened beyond the word emblem — which the 1908 notices never use — to medallion, trade mark, best design and design contest, across every cached page of 1908 to 1912." ], "related": [ "bb-1908-01-17", "bb-1910-11-16", "bb-1912-07-03" ], "date": "1908-01-10", "collection": "emblems", "publication": "The Bend Bulletin", "images": [ { "name": "plate-1", "from": "archive/online-research/2026-09-11-tier-a/news-1908-01-10-5-page-1.jpg", "original": "archive/online-research/2026-09-11-tier-a/1908-01-10-5.pdf", "page": 1, "sha256": "753d8d8c0150d8a7070e8e93b24691f73c15782ab5da8e1403cbaba3e817b655", "box": [ 668, 372, 328, 492 ], "width": 1000, "caption": "“A. M. Lara proposed this idea”, January 10, 1908.", "alt": "A newspaper column reporting that a committee was appointed to secure drawings for a trade mark for the Bend Commercial Club, and that A. M. Lara proposed the idea.", "credit": "The Bend Bulletin · Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon", "sourceUrl": "https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn96088235/1908-01-10/ed-1/seq-5/", "color": true } ], "quote": "Last Monday evening the first regular meeting of the duly organized club was held and some routine business transacted. A committee was appointed to secure suggestions and drawings for a design to be used as a sort of trade mark for the club, and to report at the next meeting. A. M. Lara proposed this idea and suggested that the design be about the size of a dollar and that all members of the club have it printed on their letterheads and envelopes; beneath the design to be the words, ‘Member of the Bend Commercial Club. All Inquiries Cheerfully Answered.' 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