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

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.