Museum of Ventura County Library & Archives collection.
by Andy Ludlum, Museum of Ventura County Volunteer
McGonigle was editor of the Democrat for 32 years and his feud with Bowers was legendary. McGonigle, a party-line Democrat, could not stand Bowers who he said, “swells and struts about like a pugnacious turkey gobbler, a man who would umpire a dog fight for notoriety and preside over a hen roost if he thought the chickens could appreciate his greatness.”
McGonigle took delight in supporting almost everything Bowers opposed and called Bowers “the biggest hypocrite and greediest human hog that ever walked the streets of Ventura” adding it was “just as natural for Parson Bowers to lie as it is for him to eat.” “Parson Bowers (says) we have called him a thief, liar, mountebank, disreputable, dishonest, ready to sell out to the highest bidder, etc. He seems to know himself better even than we do, for we have never called him a thief.”
An outspoken prohibitionist, Bowers did not shy away from the big political controversy of the day, alcohol use. Bowers had asked the Ventura Town Council to close saloons at 11 p.m. The hard-drinking McGonigle never passed up an opportunity to mock the Methodist minister, “Bro. Bowers of the Free Press returned from his camping trip on the Conejo Saturday night. He struck a colder climate than anticipated and shortened his stay in consequence. The nights were chilly, and he didn’t have his jug along.” Not to be outdone. Bowers wrote in 1887, “The Democrat intimates that our description of the business of this town was not sufficiently full in-so-much as we omitted the billiard tables and saloons. Well we didn’t want to appropriate the whole ground, so we left this to the Democrat where it properly belongs.”
Read more Ventura County History in the Museum of Ventura County Blog at www.venturamuseum.org/research-library-blog.
