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All the while, the Standard was functioning as Marcus Daly's mouthpiece; not to glorify its publisher but to lambaste Clark. One of Daly's consuming desires was to make Anaconda the capital of Montana. Clark opposed him, and won: the capital went to Helena. Thereafter Publisher Daly vowed that Clark should never realize his ambition of going to the U. S. Senate. Senators were elected by the State Legislators, who were, in Montana, either Daly men or Clark men. The Standard would print the current Clark bidding price for legislative votes which, according to the Standard, finally reached $20,000. At that juncture Daly ordered his own legislative henchmen to take the Clark bid. They obeyed and Clark was elected. Presently the Standard "broke" the story and the U. S. Senate refused to seat Senator-elect Clark, making a Roman holiday for the Standard's talented cartoonists. But Clark had the last laugh, for Montana's lieutenant-governor appointed him to fill the Senate vacancy.
Until his death in 1900, Publisher Daly is said to have spent some $5,000,000 on the Standard, which could have been a money-maker without his insistence on extravagance. After his death the bitter interest was gone, the paper waned in importance. As late as 1913 when great Anaconda Copper Mining Co. took it over from Widow Daly, it was the foremost sheet in Montana and dominated even in Butte, but not for much longer.
Three years ago the mining company bought the old enemy Butte Miner from the Clark heirs. William A. Clark Jr. tried to keep the feud alive by taking away the Miner staff and starting a new Butte daily, but there was not enough hatred left. After a few months he abandoned the project. The battle was over. Of the original Standard editors only famed Charles H. ("Egg") Eggleston survived, and he was finally forced into comparative retirement by failing eyesight. A few printers and pressmen continued to turn out the ghostlike Standard—until last week.