The Editor Who Fled to Seattle: An Olympia Newspaper War Turns Personal
The Tribune accuses Col. Thomas Henderson Boyd and a 'political combination' of running a second-hand press to purge anybody — Republican or Democrat — who won't think their way, and gleefully reprints the Skagit Valley insult that called him a cowslip in trousers.
After publishing the silly "idiotorial" attack on a prominent republican of this city, which appeared in this morning's issue of Nick's Own, Col. Thomas Henderson Boyd made his escape to Seattle or Fairhaven to hunt up and work the other end of his wonderful combination. The colonel's article did not possess even the merit of originality, the greater part of it having appeared in John Miller Murphy's Standard last Saturday.
The political combination at this end of the line formed to down all republicans and democrats not of their way of thinking is Nick Owings (capitalist republican), John Miller Murphy (unwashed democrat) and Col. Thomas Henderson Boyd, who is called a traitor in Tacoma. That new band power, second-hand, "on time" press, 250 revolutions an hour, has evidently destroyed the equilibrium of the colonel's intellect. Some time ago the Hamilton Herald, of Skagit county, contained this startling information:
"No one who knows Thomas Henderson Pants Boyd would expect him to maintain an equilibrium for any considerable length of time. He isn't built that way. He seems predisposed of flighty fits, as indicated by the incessant upward jerk of the head and simultaneous blink of the eyes. In every nervous twitch he seems to say, 'yes, I'm a daisy.' This he really believes himself to be, but had not his botanical education been horribly neglected he would at once recognize that he is only an inferior specimen of cowslip. He has editorial control of somebody's paper at Olympia, and has arrogated to himself the task of shaping the political utterances of the republican press of Washington. For daring to utter political sentiments without first consulting His Pants-ship, the Royal Duke crushes the Herald beneath the remorseless heel of his withering sarcasm, and fails to send this paper the number of the Olympian containing the caustic effusion."
Tommy is getting that "tired feeling" which will frequently come over the publisher of Nick's organ, but he is appealing to the boys, by letter or messenger boy, for small amounts, from fifty cents upward, to keep the organ afloat for at least ninety days longer.
“No one who knows Thomas Henderson Pants Boyd would expect him to maintain an equilibrium for any considerable length of time. He isn't built that way.”
Olympia in 1892 had three or four papers, each wired to a faction, and the editorial page was where political machines were built and broken. The accusation here is not about a policy but about who gets to speak for a party — the same fight now fought through endorsements, talk radio and social feeds.
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