Background
Charles was born on November 12, 1887 in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, the son of Charles Allen Sprague, a grain-elevator operator, and Caroline Glasgow.
Charles was born on November 12, 1887 in Lawrence, Kansas, United States, the son of Charles Allen Sprague, a grain-elevator operator, and Caroline Glasgow.
Charles attended public school in Columbus Junction, Iowa and worked for his father. At Monmouth College, a liberal arts school in Illinois, he paid his expenses by reporting part-time for regional newspapers.
When his income proved inadequate, Sprague took a leave at the end of his sophomore year and spent two years as a high school principal and teacher in Ainsworth, Iowa. On his return to Monmouth, Sprague earned varsity letters in football and debate, and served as editor of the student newspaper. From then on, he had aspirations to go into journalism. Following his graduation with honors in 1910, Sprague became superintendent of schools in Waitsburg, Washington. In 1912 Sprague was then named assistant superintendent of public instruction for the state of Washington.
By 1915, Sprague had saved enough to resign his state position and purchase the weekly Journal-Times in Ritzville, a small town in eastern Washington. While Sprague made the newspaper profitable and enjoyed his work, he was anxious to move into daily journalism.
In 1925 he bought a one-third interest in the Corvallis (Oregon) Gazette-Times and became business manager. Sprague increased circulation and advertising revenues and presided over the construction of a new plant. Yet, he found the job confining and less stimulating than writing editorials and reporting the news.
Sprague's ambitions were fulfilled in 1929 when he acquired a two-thirds interest in the Oregon Statesman, long the most influential newspaper in the capital city of Salem.
While serving as a governor, he reduced the state debt by $12 million and balanced the budget while increasing social welfare services. Sprague helped maintain peace in labor disputes by his forthright opposition to an antipicketing law that was later held to be unconstitutional by the Oregon Supreme Court. He lost the political backing of organized labor, though, as a result of his policy of awarding state contracts to the lowest bidder, whether or not they were union firms. Sprague was an early conservationist.
In 1940, Sprague chaired the favorite-son presidential bid of Senator Charles L. McNary, but when the Republican National Convention deadlocked in Philadelphia, Sprague helped nominate Wendell L. Willkie by delivering Oregon's votes on the sixth ballot. He encouraged McNary's selection as Willkie's running mate, and that fall he campaigned in nine western states for the Republican ticket. In the months before World War II, Sprague cautioned against isolationism and was among the few Republican governors who consistently supported Roosevelt's foreign policy.
He endorsed lend-lease aid to Britain early in 1941 and, later that year, called for the repeal of the Neutrality Act. While the nation's attention was focused on the hostilities in Europe, Sprague alerted Americans to the threat of imperial Japan. Speaking in Boston at the National Governors Conference in July 1941, he noted that the United States was vulnerable to Japanese aggression. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor five months later, Oregon's aircraft-warning system was already in place. Sprague mobilized the state's war effort, organizing civilian defense units and increasing the size of the National Guard to accommodate local defense battalions. He was defeated for renomination in the 1942 Republican primary by Secretary of State Earl Snell.
He narrowly lost a special election in 1944 for the United States Senate and never sought another public office. On leaving the governorship, Sprague returned to the Statesman and began writing a daily front-page column called It Seems to Me, as well as most of the newspaper's editorials on state and national issues.
In 1951 he led the opposition that killed a state loyalty oath for teachers.
In 1952, Truman appointed Sprague as an alternate delegate to the United Nations General Assembly. President Dwight D. Eisenhower named him in 1954 to a three-member national emergency railroad board and in 1955 to a committee on labor relations in nuclear power plants.
He died on March 13, 1969 in Salem.
For forty years Charles Arthur Sprague was editor and publisher of the Oregon Statesman, long the most influential newspaper in the capital city of Salem, and his lucid, terse, direct editorials were frequently reprinted in some of America's largest newspapers. Sprague gained a national reputation as an articulate spokesman for small-town values, fiscal conservatism, and internationalism. He also modernized the state school system by pushing through legislation that provided for the consolidation of rural school districts. Under his direction, Oregon became the first state to set up regulation over logging operations, to ensure sustained-yield management of its forests. He also established a forestry research program and obtained authority for the state to acquire abandoned cutover land for replanting. As a private citizen, Sprague remained active in state and civic affairs, serving as president of the Oregon War Chest, which raised more than $1 million for war agencies in 1943.
A lifelong Presbyterian with what friends referred to as a stern sense of Calvinism, he neither smoked nor drank, and his newspaper would not accept advertising for hard liquor.
While he maintained a Republican editorial policy, Sprague often crossed party lines to support Democrats. He gave strong editorial support to President Harry Truman in his unpopular firing of General Douglas MacArthur for insubordination in the Korean War.
As governor, Sprague was an innovative progressive. Enlisting the support of labor and industry, he moved quickly to improve the state's employment services and launched vocational-training programs to aid the jobless in efforts to lift Oregon out of the Great Depression.
Quotations: "Wise handling of natural forest lands, " he declared, "calls for their consolidation under public ownership except for those lands in the hands of strong private interests capable of carrying them through long growing periods. "
Sprague's natural aloofness and reserve were disadvantages in his political career, but he mellowed in later years and was gracious and often witty.
Quotes from others about the person
"Governor Sprague worked so hard on state problems and had so little time for the small amenities - or perhaps was distrustful of them, " the Oregonian observed, "that the result was political defeat. "
Described by Richard L. Neuberger as "the conscience of Oregon, " Sprague was an out-spoken defender of civil liberties, using his column as a forum to denounce the wartime internment of Japanese-Americans and the redbaiting tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy.
In 1912 he married Blanche Chamberlain, the principal of a local grade school; they had two children.
