Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly volume 11.djvu/326

 304 F. G. Young. The flat salary law that went into effect in 1907 provides very liberal salaries for all these officials and turns the fees they collect into the state treasury. But the language of the constitution fixing the salaries which former legislatures tried repeatedly to have changed still remains. There is surely virtue in an open and candid facing and acknowledging of con- ditions as they are. It cannot but be demoralizing for the youth of the state to be perpetually confronted with the spec- tacle in which the highest officials of the state in order to draw salaries at all commensurate with the value of their services must and do wink at the plain, evident meaning of the state constitution. In connection with the income that has attached to the office of state printer there is a situation quite distinct. The state printer's office is like those that have been noticed in being provided for in the constitution, but different in that his com- pensation is left to be determined through the rates estab- lished by the legislature for the state printing. So his income, however inordinate, does not involve a gross violation of the plain meaning of the language of the constitution. The schedule of rates allowed by the legislature ha^ve been such that the incomes of the state printers during the last two or three decades have been of prodigious proportions. It is the general concensus that $15,000 a year at least have been their average profits. The failure of the people to get eco- nomic public service of this class has been due mainly to lack of effective publicity. Neither the private citizen nor the average legislator has had data available from which to deter- mine how princely the proportions of the state printer's in- come. No doubt the methods of machine politics have, when necessary, been used to balk efforts of legislative reform of this official's compensation. Despite the intent so strongly emphasized in the discussions of the constitutional convention on the matter of salaries, and so clearly exhibited in the constitution that was retained intact for half a century, the people of Oregon have paid dearly for