The Walla Walla Press Wars
The Evening Statesman calls out its rival, the Argus, for flip-flopping on its anti-saloon crusade to appease business interests.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
In a long letter to Rev. M. H. Marvin, the editor of the Argus says that the reason he abandoned the cause of reform that he formerly so zealously advocated was because he was disheartened by the failure of the law and order people to respond to his call for a convention on Washington's birthday, 1902. This explanation is an afterthought; the real cause of his change of front was the information given him by Hon. J. B. Wilson between his issue of May 16 and that of May 22. This is proven conclusively by a double-column editorial published on the front page of the Argus on April 17, 1902, where they claimed they would never desert the law-and-order cause. The Argus had previously argued that saloon keepers were parasites who swallowed up the profits of legitimate businesses, but once their own prosperity was questioned, their tune changed.
“The saloon keepers have always thought that they owned this town, and they are the stingiest, least progressive element of the business population.”
Newspaper rivalries in early 20th-century Walla Walla were often as much about political posturing and local business feuds as they were about news. Today’s media climate, where ideological purity is often tested against the economic necessity of keeping a publication afloat, shows that the tension between 'reform' rhetoric and the reality of ad revenue is a timeless civic struggle.
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