An Editor for Oregon: Charles A. Sprague and the Politics of Change

By Floyd J. McKay

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. 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. It was to Sprague's daily front-page column, It Seems To Me, that Oregon politicians looked for advice, and the column was required reading for other editors as they shaped a moderate Republican image for postwar Oregon. 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.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0870714392
• ISBN13: 9780870714399
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Oregon State University Press
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Oregon's Charles Sprague: Editor, Governor, Leader

In "An Editor for Oregon," Floyd McKay provides a thoroughly-researched, eminently readable account of Sprague's life and times. McKay, a journalism professor at Western Washington University, brings unquestioned qualifications to this work. Before entering the academic world, he spent many years as a working journalist, both in broadcast and print. His first job was on the Oregon Statesman, working under Sprague, its owner and publisher. But though his admiration for his subject is clear, it's also a straightforward and honest account. McKay traces Sprague's birth and youth in Kansas, his migration to Washington state and the influence the Progressive movement had on shaping his political outlook, his entry into the newspaper business, and his arrival in Oregon in 1925. A few years later he acquired the Statesman, a newspaper from the state's pioneer era that had fallen on difficult times. Sprague grew quickly in stature and influence, yet his nomination and election to the governorship over incumbent Charles Martin in 1938, only 13 years after he had come to the state, was something of a surprise. His single term as governor was dominated by the state's response to the outbreak of World War II. In 1942, the same voters who had embraced Sprague only four years earlier turned their backs on him, ousting him in the Republican primary. Although a competent governor, Sprague's time in office turned out to be only a prelude to his greatest service to the state. For the next 25 years, with his front page column "It Seems To Me" and on the Statesman's editorial page, Sprague evolved into the most widely-read and respected opinion-maker in the state. Yet his active public service was not at an end; he served for a time as an alternate delegate to the United Nations. "An Editor for Oregon" provides not only a compressive look at Sprague's life and career, but a history of the state's political evolution from the Depression through the sixties. It's a first-rate work.--William C. Hall