An Editor for Oregon

by McKay, Floyd J.

• ISBN13: 9780870714399
• ISBN10: 0870714392
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1998-11-01
• Publisher: Oregon State Univ Pr

Summary

In chronicling the life of Oregon governor and newspaper editor Charles A. Sprague, Floyd McKay guides readers through the politics and journalism of twentieth-century Oregon. Sprague's remarkable career, writes McKay, "is in effect the life of a state through Depression, war and recovery, and into the era of Tom McCall and the Oregon Story". Newspaperman Charles Sprague, a progressive Republican, had lived in Oregon for only thirteen years when he became the surprise victor of the 1938 gubernatorial race. Although a capable governor, Sprague gained greater prominence during his forty-year tenure as editor and publisher of The Oregon Statesman in Salem. McKay examines the influence of Sprague's involvement in the Progressive politics of Theodore Roosevelt, his return to Republican orthodoxy, and his later emergence as a spokesman for liberal positions on race and justice, an evolution shaped by his governorship and service at the United Nations. Sprague's decisions -- and later atonements -- concerning ultra-patriotism in World War I and internment of Japanese Americans in World War II reveal an editor and governor torn by issues of his day.

Table of Contents

Foreword	viii	(1)
J. W. Forrester
Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(5)
1: A Serious Young Editor	6	(32)
2: Rescuing a Pioneer Salem Newspaper	38	(24)
3: The Editor as Politician	62	(40)
4: A Progressive Governor Goes to War	102	(34)
5: The Voters Speak--Twice	136	(23)
6: Transforming The Oregon Statesman	159	(21)
7: Civil Liberties under Siege	180	(20)
8: A World of Many Cultures	200	(23)
9: Turbulent Politics of the Fifties	223	(33)
10: An Aging Progressive in a Time of Change	256	(19)
11: Epilogue: The Progressive Legacy	275	(7)
Notes	282	(34)
Bibliography	316	(13)
Index	329