Page:The Name of William M. Tugman Added to Honor Roll.djvu/3

Rh debt burden; 12) wrote his first editorial on city-planning; 13) warned against speculating in Eugene's dry "oil well"; 14) proposed community chest to unify local welfare and charity campaigns; 15) carried on continual argument with veteran county assessor whose passion for form was obstructing school and city business.

This outline is not, of course, a list of definite accomplishments by the newspaper. The fight for better schools, run on business principles, brought early victory. The struggle for more efficient city government and better city financing has been continued through the years, with occasional concrete progress in the face of difficulties. The campaign for a city manager is on as this is written.

In his first editorial on a school election, published June 18, 1927, while public attention was still centered on Lindbergh and his transcontinental flight, Mr. Tugman sounded a keynote which has echoed through his writings on public affairs ever since. Speaking of the criticism of the two retiring directors, he wrote:

"... It is a rumbling, mumbling undercurrent of criticism rather than a specific campaign of opposition. It is as unfortunate for them as for the community that there has been no way of bringing the school campaign out into the wide open realm of facts."

This demand for facts, coupled by a restless eagerness to go and get them himself, has characterized the attitude of this editor ever since-together with the determination to get campaigns out into the wide open.

Two editorials published within a few days of each other in June, 1927, gave a line on the consistent attitude of this editor on bonds throughout his work in Eugene; not a willingness to vote bonds for anything desired in the name of improvement and progress; not, on the other hand, an unreasoning opposition to going into debt for any public purpose. On the power bonds he said:

"The Guard is for the $1,250,000 bond issue to expand Eugene's municipal power plant. . . . If we thought Eugene were destined to freeze into a permanent mould exactly its present size and shape we would not be for this issue . . . We believe the people of Eugene have the will to make this city great . .."