The legal battle that followed led to a landmark Supreme Court decision affirming the unconstitutionality of prior restraint laws.
Every morning, after breakfast, they held a family worship, and John and his siblings were all taught to abstain from alcohol, smoking and gambling.
He is also believed to have published similar papers, or at least worked in the journalism field, in Missouri and Montana, as well as Crete, Friend and DeWitt, Nebraska.
Morrison became a regularly elected honorary member of the Trades Assembly, and, in the spring of 1895, was asked to speak at an executive meeting about the boycott of the Imperial Mill's flour products.
Truelsen's candidacy was opposed by both daily papers and corporate interests, which strongly backed conservative candidate Charles Allen.
During the early 1900s, Morrison was listed in the directory as a reporter, travel agent, real estate man, broker, secretary of the Dividend Development Company, messenger for William Mies and, from 1908 to 1910, a "prospector."
"The entire work, snaking out dead-heads, filing the saw, piling the product, getting it to the market, even loading and billing it, falls on one man.
During the Ripsaw's first year, Duluth Chief of Police Robert McKercher and City Auditor "King" Odin Halden were both ousted from their positions after being labeled crooked by Morrison.
In 1924, Morrison took on state Sen. Mike Boylan, Cass County Probate Judge Bert Jamison and former Hibbing mayor Victor L. Power.
Morrison was found guilty and sentenced to 90 days in the Cass County jail, but raised bail and returned to Duluth pending appeal.
Alfred Lambert, the source of Morrison's story, was also tried for slander and criminal libel, and sentenced to 30 days in the county jail.
He also quoted Mesabi Hotel employees who told him Power had one night "crawled into bed so beastly drunk ... that he used his couch as a privy or puking place entirely without the help of cathartic or emetic."
Morrison had attacked Lommen in the past, accusing him of collecting bribes from the operators of slot machines, as well as declaring that he was such a flip-flopping "political chameleon," he would probably end up a Communist.
Senator Freyling Stevens, a powerful lawyer, introduced the Senate version of what would become known as the "Minnesota Gag Law," which made publishers of "malicious, scandalous and defamatory" newspapers guilty of creating a public nuisance, and allowed a single judge, without jury, to stop a newspaper or magazine from publishing, a practice known legally as "prior restraint", since it in effect declares the publisher to be guilty of libel even prior to the allegedly libellous material having ever appeared in print circulation, and suppresses its appearance.
In the April 6, 1926, Ripsaw, Morrison attacked Minneapolis Mayor George Emerson Leach and Duluth Commissioner of Public Utilities W. Harlow Tischer.
They had two children: John L. Jr., who died a few years after his father, and Mattie Bell, who went on to have a successful career in politics in the Chicago area.
This gave rise to Near v. Minnesota, a pivotal Supreme Court decision that struck down the Public Nuisance Law on June 1, 1931.
Friendly, Fred W. Minnesota Rag: The Dramatic Story of the Landmark Supreme Court Case That Gave New Meaning to Freedom of the Press, May 1981.
University of Minnesota Press (ISBN 0-8166-4161-7) "Morrison dies after midnight trip to Superior," May 19, 1926 Duluth News Tribune.