A scan of this article is located at the University of Oregon's Historic Oregon Newspaper site: https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn99063957/1913-08-29/ed-1/seq-2/.
Salem (Oregon) Capital Journal, August 29, 1913, page 2:
A MENACE SQUELCHED.
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THE OREGON ENUNCIATOR COMPANY and the Oregon Telephone Herald company, both of Portland, have been refused permission to sell stock in their respective companies by Commissioner Watson of the Blue Sky department. The object of each of these companies is to furnish news at the homes of its patrons. It is planned to have a central office in each community at which there will be an editor, who every morning at stated hours would, after reading the morning papers, and selecting such matter as he considered fit for the company's patrons to hear, read the same to them. In each home or office would be a series of receivers, enough for all. These, at the proper time would be strapped to the heads of the members of the families, say as they sat down to breakfast, and the news would be poured into them without any effort on their part by the editor aforesaid. They could absorb suicides with their coffee, murders and auto accidents with their eggs, and have all kinds of combined food and information together.
It is also part of the plan to have the telephones connected with the churches and theatres, so that without going to church the family can sit at home and hear the sermon, and in case they so desired when there was any thing in the musical line at the theatres, it could be heard at home. It is a great scheme that would do away with the newspapers, especially the morning editions, and also eliminate the churches, for the pastor could do his preaching in his own home and folks would not have to dress up, hunt up the small change for the collection, or do anything of that kind, and the women folks could even walk around and cook the dinner as they listened to the words of their pastor.
Commissioner Watson turned both companies down and forbade their selling stock in the state because they did not own or control wires or phones and had no means of fulfilling their contracts.
There are many other reasons why these companies should not be permitted to operate, one of which is that it might be "cruel and inhuman punishment" to have to listen to the stuff the editor might select.
It is bad enough when the reader of a paper has the choice of reading or passing by the matter furnished him by the papers, but just imagine a poor devil of a seeker after news with a couple of receivers lashed to his ears so that he could not get away, and having to listen to the Thaw case, or the Diggs-Caminetti trial just because that style of stuff happened to please the editor at the control office. Just imagine some thousands of persons here in Salem sitting at their breakfast anchored to a telephone receiver and having a Capital Journal or Statesman editorial poured into them by a heartless and non-get-at-able man at the other end of the wire. Commissioner Watson not only did a wise thing from a financial standpoint in turning these heartless would-be destroyers of peace down, but he performed a charitable and Christian act that will make even his memory sacred in Oregon.