Four Subscriptions Canceled: Tumwater Punishes the Editor for Printing Olympia's County-Seat Pitch

There are a few people in the world who have queer ideas concerning the rights and duties of the public press, as well as the individual sentiments of those who conduct them. It is seldom that a journalist can advocate the interests of one locality without incurring the enmity of this class in rival neighborhoods, notwithstanding his course may have for its object the advancement of the vital interests of the whole section.

If a word is said in favor of measures which may benefit a rival district, the pages are eagerly scanned for weeks afterward to find something favoring their peculiar interests, and if it is not found, the edict goes forth, 'Stop my paper!' We say there is a class of such narrow-minded people; thank heaven, their number is small. Such men never take the paper for the news it contains, but only to 'support the paper'; they do not give you a few lines in the way of advertising to facilitate the disposal of their wares, but that they philanthropically inform you that it is 'only to support the paper.' In fact they seem to consider that they never receive the slightest degree of benefit for the money paid for a subscription, job-work, or advertising, but all is done merely for the 'support of the paper.' Such a man, when he discontinues his paper, fondly imagines that he seriously injures the business of the unfortunate editor who may have by chance incited his revengeful ire, and if he can induce three or four others to league with him the annihilation is made doubly sure, and he is astounded if the paper survives the shock!

Deliver us from all such miserly, narrow-souled men. We envy them not the pleasure they may experience in penning those words of concentrated enmity and hate, 'Stop my paper.' If it would lessen their pleasure, we would hesitate to state that their 'support' amounts to almost nothing in the aggregate of subscriptions which sustain a newspaper.

In our last issue we published, without comment, the address of the Board of Trustees of the town of Olympia, making proposals to secure the location of the county-seat — not merely because we were personally favorable to the object sought to be attained by the board, but as a matter of news, and for the reason that a portion of that address was ordered to be printed as an advertisement by the Town Trustees — just what we would have done for Tumwater had we been requested — and yet this action on our part has reduced our list four names at Tumwater!