The fight in the state legislature last winter to retain the delinquent tax list in its present form was not in the interest of the small town weeklies. Had this been the case an effort would have been made by the “legislative committee” of the editorial association to obtain a law that would have divided the tax list and provided that all parcels of land on which taxes were delinquent should be published in the paper nearest the property. A law along this line would have given every publisher a square deal and would also have given the delinquent tax list a much wider publicity. As the law now stands, it is not unusual to see two papers in the same town publishing the delinquent tax list.
The provisions of the law which provide that all the county patronage shall go to the two papers of opposite political affiliation having the largest circulations is unfair. The weekly publisher in the small town is paying his proportionate share of the taxes and is entitled to his proportionate share of the county printing. Bids for bonds, for road construction, for wood and other matters from the county court, job printing from the several county offices, and other work which should be divided among the various printers in each county, or awarded to the lowest responsible bidder, is all turned over to the paper with the alleged largest circulation.
To exist the small town publisher must have business, and there is no valid reason why he should not receive his proportionate share of the county printing. But no relief from present conditions would follow the organization of county units. The publishers who now have the lion’s share would expect to retain it, and as soon as the small town publishers suggested changes in the state law that would give them a county “take” occasionally, trouble would follow.
The writer is a member of the Oregon State Editorial association and while he believes it has some good features, he does think that those at the head of its affairs have not shown that interest in the welfare of the small town publisher to which he is entitled. Not until the publishers of the small town weeklies get together and form an organization from which the “biggest list” publishers are excluded, can they hope to “come into their own.” Such an organization must strive for laws which would give them a “look in” on county patronage, and thus enable them to attain a higher standard of value in the communities where they are published. The present editorial associations in Oregon are all right so far as the country dailies and the big town weeklies are concerned, but publishers of small town weeklies can hope for nothing in the way of “fat takes” through these associations unless there be some agreement or understanding which will assure a benefit for all instead of a few. There must be a mutual interest between the big town and small town publishers, otherwise it is a “house divided against itself,” and the real object for which editorial associations were ostensibly formed is lost. Small town publishers could no doubt organize county units to good advantage to themselves, but in order to get results such units must be composed of small town publishers exclusively.
