Jasper County Democrat, Volume 8, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 September 1905 — ARE SUCH PUBLICATIONS LEGAL? [ARTICLE]

ARE SUCH PUBLICATIONS LEGAL?

Question Raised Ae To Legality Of Publications Made In the Kankakee Valley Review. At the meeting of the county commissioners Monday the publisher of The Jasper County Democrat and the publisher of the Rensselaer Republican filed a paper with the board asking to be heard on matters coming before them where publications of notices had been made in the Kankakee Valiev Review, stating that in the belief of such publishers the notices referred to were not legal, and offering to present evidence in the matter. The publications referred to were two license notices from Wbeatfield, and the objections to the publications were based on the fact that the law states that the notices must be published in “a weekly newspaper in the county.” While it is true that the Review is printed in Rensselaer, Jasper county, its alleged publisher resides at Thayer, Newton county, and the only known office that he has anywhere, in either county, is at his residence. The printed papers are shipped by express to Roselawn where those intended for mailing in Newton county are mailed. Themext morning the publisher personally takes a little bundle over to Wbeatfield, Jasper county—with the date line ohanged to Wheatfield—and mails them there. The paper contains legal notices for both Newton county and Jasper oounty, and the question was could the same paper carry legal notices for each county and merely change the date line and mail a few copies at Wheatfield, and thus

legalize the publications in this county? Without passing on this phsze of the matter the board held that as the objectors were not residents of Wheatfield township they could not object to any of the proceedings in any way, and of course nothing farther could be done without appeal, which would be simply on the ruling, which, perhaps, may have been right. But the next time a matter of this kind comes up it is scarcely likely the same ruling will be in order. So far as The Democrat is concerned it has no objections whatever to Mr. Bowie “publishing” a paper in either Jasper county or in Newton county, but it does not believe that by the slight change of a date line and mailing part of the edition in Jasper county and a part in Newton county, for the sole purpose of securing legal publications in both counties, that such publications can be legal in both counties, and it proposes to test the matter as to whether they are legal or not. In determining the legality of this new move in the publishing business The Democrat should have—and we believe does have—the moral support of every publisher of a legitimate newspaper in Indiana. People having matters in court requiring the publication of legal notices want to know that such publication has been legal, that in years to come the whole proceeding may not have to be gone through with again with added expense and vexation. Neither do the legitimate newspapers of a county want some “ cheap John” from some other county to come into their field with a few copies of a paper under his arm and enter them at some postoffice in the county and thus attempt to deprive the legitimate papers of legal publications that rightfully belong to them. The particular publications attacked would neither of them have come to The Democrat or the Republican, and the raising the question was not against the applicants but against the policy of the paper they were published in.