Jasper County Democrat, Volume 14, Number 10, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 May 1911 — DEMOCRAT’S BID NOT BIG ENOUGH [ARTICLE]

DEMOCRAT’S BID NOT BIG ENOUGH

High School Committee Insists on Paying High Prices Ml DEMOCRATS NEED APPLY Might Prevails In Letting Contract for School Job. —Democrat Invited to Bid and Bid Was Lower Than the Republican, but the Republican Gets the Contract Because— In awarding the contract for the high school annual, which was turned over to the Republican, regardless of The Democrat’s bid, the management, it seems, was unduly coerced and influenced by Mr. Bradshaw, a member of the high school faculty. The Democrat was asked to submit a bid and did so. Two students connected with the annual wanted the job to come here, but Mr. Bradshaw did not. Being a teacher, the student body naturally looked to him in the na- «■ ture of a leader and his arguments prevailed. The Republican’s original bid was 5260, as admitted by Mr. Bradshaw. The Democrat’s original (and only) bid was $1.25 a page, and not $1 as erroneously stated in Saturday’s issue. (The Democrat had intended to submit a bid of $1 per page but knowing the character of the work desired had raised this to $1.25 and had submitted this to the committee. Tlhe error in Saturday’s issue arose from this fact and that the copy of our bid was mislaid.) The total of The Demociat’s bid would be, including stock, $l9O, or S7O less than the Republican’s. But Mr. Bradshaw told the Republican, as he admits, that The Democrat had bid low'er, and in

order to have the Republican do the work they would have to “cut a little.” This, they obligingly did, and the contract was awarded them at $235, or $25 lower than their original bid, but still $45 higher than The Democrat.' „ The Republican knew it was profiting by a dishonorable act when Mr. Bradshaw allowed them to revise their bid, and were careful to make no mention of the fact that their original bid was $260, but with their usual tendency to maliciously misrepresent and distort the facts say their bid was $235. if the county commissioners were to let the contract for a bridge and, when the bids were submitted, were to go to some particular bidder and inform him that his bid was too high and he would have to “cut a little,” the majority of the voters would begin to wonder where the “Stop! Look! Listen!” signs were. Much is expected of a teacher on account of his, or her, position in life. And for a member of a high school faculty, a man who is supposed to try to inculcate into the minds of pupils ideas that may afterward determine their whole career, to stoop to to such low, underhand, despicable methods is almost beyond belief. As to the statement of the Republican:

“The Democrat office would have to do the work either on a platinum job press or on a newspaper press, and it is an absolute impossibility to do good half tone work on either.” There is a song that says: “Somebody falsified to me.” Some of the finest half-tone and color work of today is done on platen press, (and we suppose this is what the Republican has reference to —platen press, or job press.) When we say some of the finest work, we mean just that. This statement can readily be verified in any trade paper. A “platinum” press at S4O an ounce, (the quoted price of platinum) and the press weighs approximately 1,800 pounds, • w r ould cost $1,152,000. No, we have no such press. Again: “The committee studied this proposition over.”' • . _lt stands to reason that a committee of high school students

instructed by a master printer who does not even know the names of the machines in his ow'd office, and ably assisted by Mr. Bradshaw, who admits he told the Republican to “cut a little,” would not study out the mechanical difference between a cylinder press and a "platinum" press. Yet again:

“Another thing taken into consideration about Babcock's bid, was his intention of sending the .half tone work which his office is not prepared to do down to Monticello to have done. The high school committee did not want the work sent away from Rensselaer when they could get as good pr better work at home.” Nothing was said to any member of the committee or anyone else about sending the work or any portion of it outside of town until last Saturday, when we did say: “Our .intention was, in case we were rushed to perhaps send some of the half tone presswork to the Pratt Printing Co. at Monticello, but to do all the composition and most of the presswork here!”

As to comparing the merits or demerits of individual workmen in rival offices, the e. a. ( eminent authority) in the Republican editorial room should at least omit them. This seems to us to be an insidious attempt to deprecate workmen because they are employed by a rival concern. The office where the work is done invariably gets the blame or credit for the finished product. And the individual workman is but a cog in the wheel. And last, but by no means least, the Republican has not now and never has had, a halftone cylinder press. They have a Miehle press (old style) that was thrown out of the government printing office, but the machine never was a half-tone press in any sense of the word. Naturally high school students can hardly be expected to have a technical knowledge of equipment. If they had and had not been biased by unfair influence on the part of the e. a., The Democrat would have printed them a good job. Not a fair job, but a real modern piece of work and not done it on a “platinum” press, either. The Republican in its effort to smooth over the baldness of this deal, and in its technical (?) explanation reminds one of Goldsmith’s “Deserted Village”: “And still they gazed. And still their wonder grew, That one small head cpuld carry all he knew.”