Johnson, Arthur C. (Arthur Chilion), 1874-1937

Arthur Chilion Johnson was born in Denver July 13, 1874. He attended the University of Colorado and received a degree of LLB in 1914 from George Washington University, in Washington D. C. He was admitted to the bar in Washington and in Colorado while he did newspaper work, a career he was to follow through most of his life on The Rocky Mountain News. He served in the 1st Colorado infantry in the war with Spain in 1898, and supplied correspondence to the News from Manila, where he was stationed. Discharged in the Orient, he engaged in correspondence work for the New York Sun, Chicago Record, Collier's Weekly and the Manila American. He was a New York Sun correspondent on the Boxer campaign in China in 1900, and traveled in India and Europe on the way home to America after an absence of three years. For six years he was secretary in Washington to his uncle, Senator Thomas M. Patterson of Colorado, and for 14 years he worked in the press gallery at Washington. During these years, Johnson studied law and was a member of the Delta Tau Delta college fraternity and Phi Delta Phi legal fraternity. Johnson worked on the Washington Post, Washington Herald and Associated Press bureau at Washington; also, for a period on the Washington bureau of the Chicago Tribune. His was elected secretary of the National Press Association from 1908 to 1911 and, in Denver, he engaged in publicity work for the chamber of commerce, editing the Denver Civic & Commercial for four years from 1915 to 1919. He purchased an interest in The Denver Daily Record Stockman in 1919 and continued as editor and publisher in partnership with his brother Fred. In 1931, he was appointment secretary of the Denver Livestock Exchange, and practiced law, continuing his association with the Record Stockman, and was counsel for the livestock exchange in the famous sale-in-transit case before the Interstate Commerce Commission, representing the exchange in Washington in negotiations leading up to the establishment of one of the branches of the Regional Agricultural Credit Corporation in Denver. Johnson attained national prominence as a war correspondent and political commentator, but his keenest interest was the cattle industry of the west, particularly the Denver stockyards. He died January 10, 1937, one week before the opening of the National Western Stock Show in which, as second vice president of the Western Stock Show Association, he had long been a dominant figure.