How Washington Territory's Public Printing Became a Corrupt Political Perk

The Oregonian speaks in highly complimentary terms of the manner in which public printing is executed for the Washington Territorial Legislature, commending to the State Printer of Oregon as an example worthy of imitation. It says: “The bill printing at Olympia is good, honest, fair work. The object is to do the printing in a proper manner, for which fair compensation is awarded.” It gives us pleasure to endorse this tribute to Mr. C. B. Bagley, our Public Printer, as just and well merited. He has uniformly discharged the duties of that office in a manner honorable to himself and creditable to the craft, in striking contrast with the legislative printing of Oregon, every sheet of which is disgraceful to the art and an evidence of fraud, with matter which ought to be printed on one page stretched out over two or three, commencing near the bottom of the first and extended perhaps a line or two upon the last page, the whole being charged by the page, making two or three prices for composition, paper and press work. This fraudulent system originated from an almost universal practice of party demagogues in subordinating the newspaper press to their own selfish designs, by attaching conditions to the public printing such as honorable members of the craft will not accept, thus leaving it in the hands of subservients and timeservers who can be controlled to do their bidding, and are at liberty to enhance their profits by depredations upon the public treasury. In Oregon, the rights of printers as a class have never been considered by politicians in the selection of candidates for the office of Public Printer; it has almost uniformly been bargained off in convention for support for other offices, and frequently fallen to disreputable politicians who were not practical printers, and who farmed it out to printers who depended upon the “stealings” for their profits. Under that system the newspaper press of Oregon obtained its unenviable reputation for a low character of journalism which has passed into a proverb as the Oregon style.

In this Territory Hon. Henry G. Struve was the first Secretary within our recollection to award the printing to a practical printer without bribery, and to that fact may be attributed the present honest discharge of the trust. During that time the Territorial Printers have been George A. Barnes, (banker,) S. Coulter, (hatchery) Rogers, (nephew and clerk to the Secretary,) McElroy, (speculator,) and Chas. Prosch, (printer); only one practical printer and publisher, and he published the statement in his paper that he paid Secretary Smith two thousand dollars for the appointment.

There is no good reason why the very responsible office of Public Printer should not be regarded and treated with the same consideration and subjected to the same conditions in regard to remuneration for services as other offices of like responsibility, except that printers and publishers, in a spirit of unmanly rivalry consent and contribute to the degradation of their craft. In much an insult to craftsmen to confer the office of Public Printer on a lawyer as it would be to lawyers to give the office of Attorney General to a printer; it being as necessary in one case as the other to farm the office out in order to a competent discharge of the duties of the same. There is no more reason for submitting the office of public printer to the competition of bidding than there is selecting any other officer of the government in the same manner. It is a game in which the most incompetent and unscrupulous have the advantage, by which the most worthless services are secured, and in the aggregate the public are swindled by dishonest combinations and fraudulent computations to much greater amount than is saved by the system. It is a device of small demagogues to commend themselves to popular favor by manifesting their zeal for public economy, and is supported by a class of journalists who can command nothing by their merits and are willing to subsist on the refuse of their more respectable contemporaries; a class significantly characterized by the craft as rats.