The Price of Printing: A 19th Century Fight Against 'Cheap John' Contracting

The annual contest over the public printing has occupied a large space in the Portland dailies for some weeks past, and has cost more time and labor in its discussion in City Council and through the public prints than the printing would cost at standard rates. A like discussion is in course upon the same subject at Walla Walla, and is bound to be repeated in every municipality in which more than one newspaper is published, every time a public printer is selected under the exceptional 'Cheap John' system of letting public service to the lowest bidder, regardless of merit or qualification. All this public annoyance, more frequently than otherwise attended with public loss, always open to combinations and chicanery to extort, could be avoided if the men entrusted with official position would administer the same with the same discretion they exercise in their own private affairs. Good business men select their advertising mediums with more regard to quality than to cheapness; and all who regard the newspaper press in its representative character in relation to their town, seek to elevate rather than to degrade it. It is uniformly the small-beer politicians and ward demagogues who seek to commend themselves to popular approval as public economists by making the office of public printer an exception to all other municipal offices. The character of their official paper is of vastly more importance to the standing of the town abroad than the character of any other of its municipal officers; the people have as much right to dictate the choice of a City Printer as they have to choose a Mayor, and a Council which disregards popular sentiment ignores the source of its own existence, and insults popular intelligence.