Rensselaer Republican, Volume 25, Number 24, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 February 1893 — More About Public Advertising. [ARTICLE]

More About Public Advertising.

In regard to the nomination of Jackson as Lainar’s successor on the Supreme Bench, we believe that President Harrison found that he must choose between the alternative of nominating, a Republican and having him rejected by the combined vole of the Democratic senators and about a dozen sore-headed or silver crank Republican senators; and thus leave the vacancy to be filled by a state’s rights Bourbon of Cleveland’s selection; or he must nominate a moderate and progressive Demo*crat, and have him confirmed. He choose |the latter alternative, and the persons really to blame for it are the hostile senators who forced jshe alternative upon him. We are the more disposed to think this action of the President is all right from the fact that Gen. Clarkson is so bitterly opposed to it. Clarkson is the Dave Hill of the Republican party, in a reduced copy, and the fact that he is “agin” a thing, is a pretty good evidence that the party ought to be for it.

It would probably be a monumental mistake for Uncle Sam to enter upon a policy of land gabbing in remote parts of the world, as a regular practice but that fact does not necessarily prove that the Sandwich Islands now asking to be annexed to this country, ought to be rejected. Nearly all of the trade relations of the islands are with the United States, and, what is vastly more important, the islands would be of great service to us in a military point of view. A good naval station in the Pacific Ocean is one of the country’s greatest needs, and these islands are exactly what is wanted for the purpose. Moreover, the islands, being within the tropics and very fertile, they produce many things which cannot be produced in this country, and will be of value to us for that reason. Still another strong argument in favor of our taking the islands is that if we don’t take them some other strong naval power, like England or Germany, will, and they will then become what so many neighboring islands in the Atlantic now are, sites of pow ts u! forts and naval forces, and * constant menace to our seacoaiis.

Last week we promised to give some “valid reasons” why it might not be best to dispose of the “public printing” by contract to the lowest bidder. And by the term public printing, we mean now simply that part of it which might better be called public advertising, that is tire printing done in the newspapers. The far more costly part of the public printing, the supplying the county and court officials with the blanks and stationery needed, in their official duties, is already let out in that manner, at least in this county, although not always with entirely satisfactory results. -- The public advertising, what little there is of it, is now mostly controlled by county officials. The auditor publishes his delinquent tax list, and his annual financial exhibit; and the Treasurer his notice of tax levies, in any paper they please. On rare occasions, a new bridge or public building is advertised, usually in one or more papers selected by the commissioners. The political nominations are published by the county clerk, or by the town clerks, but in these publications the officials are confined by law to the papers representing the leading political parties, at least in towns where such papers are published. The Commissioners’ allowances are published in the paper showing the largest circulation in the county. These items, with occasional unimportant exceptions, comprises about all there is of “public printing” rightly so-called, because the public pays for it. And even the delinquent tax list Ought hardly to be included, for the pay for that all comes out of the property owners, whose land is advertised. The pay for publishing this list is 20 cents a description, as fixed by law (publishers formerly got from 50 cents to a dollar, under the boasted lowest bidder plan.) The commissioners’ allowances pay 5 cents each allowance, while most other forms of public advertising are paid for by the square of 250 “ems” each> at rates fixed by law.

All these forms of public advertising are required in order that the people may be informed as to how their public affairs are being conducted. Under the present system this advertising is usually done in a county seat paper representing one or the other of the two great political parties. Now we simply state a fact which all our readers know to be only the simple truth, when we gay that in the very great majority of counties in this state, almost every intelligent family takes a county seat paper, representing one of the two great parties. They want to know what the courts are doing, what the commissioners are doing, what the county officers are doing and what their political organization is doing. Therefore they take their county political paper, and when public advertising is done in these papers it really reaches the public, and so fills the purpose for which it is intended.

Supposing now, however, that this public advertising was let out by contract to the lowest bidder, as certain disinterested (?) reformers (?) are demanding. Now if this were done, one of these two things would happen: There would either be actual competition, or else a combination, among the publishers of the county. In the former case, the poorest and most cheaply conducted and most local papers iu the county would naturally get the contracts. In our own county, for instance, what more reasonable than to suppose that the Remington Press would make the lowest bid. With a subscription list of only a few hundred, its paper bills are very low. Setting but a few columns of type per week, and paying but little atten-" tion to the matter of hunting up local news, its labor and reportorial expenses are also very small, and as for editorial work, it has absolutely nothing, except what is done with the shears, unless it possibly be the correction of the spelling and grammar of some

lick-spittle sycophant’s eulogy of Statesman Patton; or some other equally valuable communication. Occupying a small and undesirable upstairs room in a town where such rooms are in excess of the demand, it has very small rents to pay, or none at all. Such a paper could, naturally, afford to publish the public advertising for a great deal less than could any respectably conducted county seat paper. Its hired compositor editor would charge no more for his time in setting up legal notices than for the same time occupied in putting in type the “original” editorials he cuts from other papers and forgets so But what good would such public advertising as that do the people? Excepting a few copies sent to the county seat, and a few more into Jordan and Milroy townships, the paper has no circulation in this county, worth mentioning, outside of Carpenter township, and if the public printing were placed in its columns the people of the county generally, would have no knowledge of what that printing was; or else they would be obliged to subscribefora paper 'they did not want and had no interest in, and. thus have pay out, in the aggregate, a vastly larger amount every year than the public advertising now costs them.

The above is what would result in most counties where there was actual competition among the newspaper publishers. But as the said publishers are made out of a good deal of the same kind of material as other men, they would usually act in about the same way as other men would, under the same or similar circumstances. The leading papers would combine and buy off the cheap Jacks, and then make their bids high enough to pay them as much for the printing as they get now, and also to make up what they had to pay to the Cheap Jacks, besides. This form of combination is already pretty nearly the regular rule among the outside-printing and stationery ho uses, which go through the motions of bidding on county stationery supplies, as it formerly Was among newspaper publishers, when public advertising was let out by contract. Also among all kinds of contractors for public work.

Either form of the above dilemma, resulting from the lowest bidder, contract plan, would be better for the Cheap Jacks than the present arrangement Jis, but worse for the people. Hence the aforesaid Jacks may be expected to still continue their demand for this great “Reform.” To illustrate how thoroughly unsuitable as mediums for public advertising are such local papers as the Remington Press, (and third party political sheets belong in the same category) and how nearly thrown away, money spent upon them for that purpose would be, we mention a couple of instances which lately came to our attention:

A notice of intention to apply for a saloon license; and also a non-resident notice in a case where the plaintiff was applying for a divorce, were lately published in the Press. Now that paper was selected as the medium of these publications, not for the purpose, which the law contemplates, of giving notice to the parties interested of what was being done, but for the exactly opposite purpose of concealing it By a mere accident the people of the town of the proposed saloon learned of the license notice in the Press, but probably the friends of the defendant in the divorce case never learned of the publication in that case. That paper, as these instances prove, is an excellent medium for legal notices which the makers of desire to keep secret, but that ,is not the’kind of advertising the people want to get when they pay their money for it Such public advertising as that would not be cheap at any price—

—r—not be worth taking as a free gift, in point of fact The selection of such papers as the Press as the medium of public or other legal advertising, may be in compliance with the letter of the law, but it surely is « yjplation of its spirit, and the howl such local, and political side issue, (and snide issue) papers are making in this respect, is simply from a desire to draw public money, and for which they could render no equivalent service.