Arizona silver belt., 1897-01-14
JANUARY I4, 1897.
THE LAW ON PRINTING AND
 PUBLISHING.

county, doubtless through a praise- worthy desire to economize in county expenditures, has seen fit to discon. tinue the publication of the proceed ings of the board. This action directly concerns the tax payers of the county, since the minutes of the board ss pub lished in the columns of the ARIZONA SILVER BELT have been the only avail able source of information of the transactions of tho board which has the apportionment of the funds aud entire supervision of county affairs. To claim that the members of the board are reputable men in whom the people of the county have implicit con fdence, tan admitted fact, is special pleading. No one will impute to them wrong motives, and the very fact of their high standing in the community, it would seem, should prompt them to make public their every act. Neither is the publication of the minutes an item of sufficient importance in the county expenditures to justify the board in withholding them from the public, if that could be legally done, which We allege can not, under the proper constructisn sf law.
 The board bases its right to omit the publication of its proceedings, no doubt, upon the last lines of subdi- vision 20, of paragraph 397, Of the Re vised Statutes of Arizona, 1887, which read: "And the supervisors shall de- termine what printing is or is not necessary" We italicize the word "printing" in order to fix more clearly the distinction between printing and publishing. The law in the very same section in which the words quoted oc- cur makes this distinction in command ing that the board shall contract for the county printing and advertising 'in paper of general circulation wholly PRINTED AND PUBLISHED within the county" Webster gives the defini ton of print as '',o press or impress" ''to take an impression of" thence, specifically, to strike of an impression, or impressions, from types" And the definition of publish, ito make pub lic;" ito send forth as & book or other literary work" Printed matter is not necessarily published, but all publica tions in newspaper sre printed. The distinction is so plain as to admit of no argument.
 The statute of 1887 did not contem- plate the publishing of the minutes, and therefore the words print" aud ''printiug" are alone used, and relate exclusively to the printing of station cry, blanks, etc, required by the board and other county officers.
 As already stated, the law of 1887 did not provide for the publication of the minutes of the supervisors and, therefore, no provision of that law can be cited as qualifying the law of 1891 in respect to the publication of the proceedings Section 2 of the law of 1891 declares that, "for printing and publishing the proceedings of the board of supervisors the price shall not ex- ceed sixty cents per inch, etc." Sec ton of the same act declares that, ''all advertisements, notices, proclama tions, PROCEEDINGS SHALL be given to daily newspaper or papers, if such be published within the county and if no such daily newspaper or papers be published with. in such county, then all such advertise ments, notices, proclamations shall be given to weekly paper within the county.
 The act of 1891, therefore, in two section, mentions the proceedings of the board of supervisors as matter for publication. Why should the proceed ings have been alluded to, or why price fixed for their publication if it was not the intention of the framers of the law to make their publication com pulsory And if the words ''sball be given to paper" is not command, by implication, that the proceedings be published, of what significance are they? It IS certain the supervisors would not be directed to give the pro ccedings to a newspaper, unless the publication of them was contemplated any other inference is idle. The act of 1891 was framed by a committee of the Sixteenth Legislature and members of the Arizona Press Association in con- ference, and it is not reasonable to sup pose that tue printers and publishers who participated in that conference did not understand the English language, or that any ambiguity in the wording of the law vonld have escaped their notice and correction. The maximum prices agreed upon and established by the law were deemed asonablo-being less than the rates current in Arizona for printing and publishing.
 Section 6 of the act of 1891 repesls