Charles Arthur Sprague (12 November 1887-13 March 1969) was the Republican Governor of Oregon from 9 January 1939 to 11 January 1943, succeeding Charles Martin and preceding Earl Snell.
Biography[]
Charles Arthur Sprague was born in Lawrence, Kansas in 1887, and he was raised in Columbus Junction, Iowa before becoming a teacher in Ainsworth. In 1910, he moved to Waitsburg, Washington to serve as superintendent of schools, and he moved to Oregon in 1925 and became business manager of the Corvallis Gazette Times. From 1945 to 1965, he was the editor and publisher of the Oregon Statesman, and he became a progressive Republican and a spokesman for small-town values, fiscal conservatism, and internationalism. Sprague served as Governor of Oregon from 1939 to 1943, consolidating rural school districts, launching vocational training programs to lift his state out of the Great Depression, opposed the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, and failed in his 1944 bid for the US Senate. He died in 1969.