The Paper War: Port Townsend vs. Seattle

PREPOSTEROUS MISCONSTRUCTION.

The Port Townsend Argus in its last issue published a long article inveighing against Seattle enterprise in terms of malice and exaggerated acrimony. The occasion was the issue of some orders from business men of that city for letter-heads to agents of the INTELLIGENCER office, which makes a specialty of that kind of work, as well as job printing in general.

The Argus ventilates its grievances in the following strains:

"RS* FOR WHOM IT MAY CONCERN! Is it possible that Port Townsend has become a dependency of Seattle? Such was the exclamation of a citizen of our town one day last week, upon learning the fact that many of our merchants, business men and hotel keepers had honored a drummer from a job-printing office in Seattle with an order for letter heads, they having been inveigled into the scheme by inducements of cheapness, advertising their business, a description of Port Townsend, etc., precisely what is being done every week by the Argus at the lowest living rates. Bosh! such nonsense,' said another, 'the orders were given with the idea that the work could not be done here.' This last feature of the matter, though natural, struck us as not a little singular, particularly in connection with the fact that there is a well-conditioned job-printing office here, with as good appliances for the execution of the work as any office in the Territory, and it naturally gave rise to 'a unpleasantness.'

'Realizing more keenly our struggles in this regard, we were intuitively led inquire: What has Seattle done, and more especially towards sustaining Port Townsend, in any respect, that work, which could be done cheaply and as well done here as there, should be given to that place? We will rehearse a tithe of the evidences of their good will concerning it. They have done all in their power to injure it, not only by some of their newspapers and citizens generally but by their agents hired to traduce it; they obtained the removal of the office of Inspector of Boilers from this port to that; they have used their utmost endeavors to have the custom house removed thither, and have tried every artifice that genius could invent to divert trade and business from us; yet in the face and eyes of all this our business men are contributing to their aggrandizement to the injury of home industries!

Reader, the foregoing, while it would seem in some of its essentials to partake of the farceal is, notwithstanding the absurdity of the fact complained of, a stern reality. We have devoted our means and energies to the best interests of the town every dollar that we could spare has been put into it, and we cannot but feel that the work of sustaining interests inimical to those of Port Townsend is suicidal. There are other things that might be said and comparisons instituted in connection with other business than printing, but enough for this time.'

While we cannot take any exceptions to the Argus' zeal in urging the Townsiders to continue their patronage at home, in all matters where their local institutions can be abated as well as it can be done abroad, still we cannot let it pass, in justice, without putting in our disclaimer against the railing accusation made, that we, as a newspaper, or that Seattle as a community, have any malicious purpose or any disposition to undermine, or in anywise blight the established prosperity of Port Townsend. On the contrary, we have always held as a self-evident truth, along with Josh Hillings, that the man who can raise himself up without yanking others down, is a humiliated knave.

Realizing that we have a Territory as big as all out doors, with capabilities of supporting millions of people, we most heartily disown any inclination to indulge a dog in the manger spirit of detraction or unfair rivalry against our neighbor towns on the Sound. Our Port Townsend exchange has treated of the matter rather in sorrow than in anger, and we have taken it up in no spirit of recrimination, but only as affording an opportunity to define our position on questions of this kind and to correct any misapprehension that may be held in the minds of some readers by the article quoted."