The year 1911 marked the 44th Anniversary of the Scranton Republican and the 20th Anniversary of the Scranton Tribune. The two papers merged in 1910 and became the Tribune Republican. To commemorate both milestones, the publishers of the newspaper commissioned artist Sarah Farley Allan to illustrate the cover of a special anniversary supplement.

At the top of the drawing, Farley-Allan depicted the evolution of the newspaper business, from early manual typesetting, at left - when movable type was placed in a press by hand, inked and an impression made on paper - to a modern machine offset printing press, at right.

Two signs, Slocum Hollow, 1840, at lower left, and Scranton, 1911, at lower right, represent the city’s origins, followed by seventy-one years of industrial, technological and cultural progress, including, a thriving free press.

Farley-Allan’s skillfully detailed, multi-faceted drawing, one of her best, is a portrait of Scranton’s history. The centerpiece is the Goddess of Progress, who has laurel in her hair and is holding a torch. She resembles a statue mounted atop a dome on San Francisco’s City Hall, sculpted in 1896 by F. Marion Wells.

At right, the Roman Goddess, Abundantia, source of abundance and prosperity, holds a cornucopia filled with fruit in one arm, and distributes gold coins and flowers with the other. Behind her is a view of downtown Scranton, including, City Hall and the Scranton Board of Trade Building, a trolley car and a statue of George Washington on Courthouse Square, the 10-story Mears Building, and a Voisin biplane overhead, first flown in 1909.

At far left, an old man, leaning on a pick, represents one of the original Slocum Hollow settlers who mined iron ore in the nearby mountains. Visible in the background are several structures in the village that borders Roaring Brook - the home of brothers, Ebenezer and Benjamin Slocum; a gristmill with a water wheel that ground grain into cereal; a school; a cooper shop and a sawmill. In Slocum Hollow, Selden and George Scranton built four stone blast furnaces and developed a process that combined Anthracite coal and iron ore to produce pig iron, used to make rails for the Erie Railroad.

Two young boys are depicted in the bottom corners of the drawing, The one at left has a lute by his side (representing music) and is holding up a small structure with three pillars. Near his feet are a paint palette with two brushes (art), a box with a row of books (literature), and a triangle (geometry) propped against the box. Under everything are large sheets, or perhaps an open book. The three pillars likely represent Music, Art and Literature, core elements of education and the young city’s culture. The boy at right is talking on a telephone, a symbol of technological progress. A large gear wheel, a hammer and other machine components represent industrial progress.

Throughout the drawing, Farley-Allan added flower petals and foliage to further support her themes of growth and development.

The original newspaper image (17 x 23”) provided by Kim Harbester.