The German-American Press

paper in Merrill, Wisconsin. He left to pay a visit to his German
homeland and upon his return in 1903, Sallet purchased the Dakota
Freie Presse of Yankton.
Almost immediately Sallet established a pattern that would
characterize his approach as a newspaper man for the next three
decades: He took off for several months to visit his readers.
Everywhere in the Dakotas he discovered people interested in
keeping up the German language, traditions, customs, religious
practices, and a people who viewed the Dakota Freie Presse as
an excellent medium for solidarity in their cultural endeavors. We
should remind ourselves at this juncture that the Russian Germans not
only in the United States but also on the far-flung Russian steppes
had wanted to maintain their culture and their language. Housed
in villages and towns that were enclaves within the larger Russian
majority, this minority had depended on receiving newspapers
and printed material from a central location-Moscow, Odessa or
wherever-which circulated over thousands of miles. The Dakota
Freie Presse would become a major force in maintaining such
cohesion among the Russian Germans, not just in the Dakotas, but
eventually in all of the United States, Canada, and South America,
and subsequently in the German colonies of Russia as well.
In order to expand its chosen mission, the paper in 1905
declared itself politically independent at a time when this meant
losing the patronage of the Republican Council. But soon the paper
expanded with the support of the Russian-Germans so that by 1909
it could boast not only of having the finest publishing house in
South Dakota but also more subscriptions than any English-language
paper in that state. From a circulation of 3,500 in 1900 the paper
increased to about 10,000 in 1910.12 After an interlude away from
the paper between 1906 and 1909, Sallet moved the paper from
Yankton to Aberdeen where it anchored itself in the heartland of
the Russian Black Sea German settlements until World War I. In
Aberdeen, Sallet expanded his activities considerably. As the paper
became more and more the "Bible of the Russian-Germans," its
opportunities increased. Advertising picked up because the paper
had become the best channel to the economically important farming
communities of the Dakotas. Sallet next developed the DFP Travel
Bureau, which continued for several decades. In addition, the paper
solicited histories of all U.S. settlements of Germans from Russia

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