Archives West Finding Aid

Ashley Elder Holden (1894-1994) was born in Rutledge, Missouri on September 13, 1894 to Andrew Franklin Holden and Ella Davis (Henry). Holden spent his earliest boyhood years in Colorado, but by the turn of the century his family had moved to Washington State where they staked out a homestead claim near Brewster, along the banks of the Columbia River. Having established roots in the Pacific Northwest, Holden devoted most of his life to conservative political causes.

Holden married Ruth Turner in 1915. They raised two children, Ashley Elder, Jr. and Rita Marie. During these years of marriage, Holden published various small town Washington newspapers. After a brief stint in the army in 1918 and 1919 he returned to Washington where he worked as a reporter on the Yakima Daily Republic. In 1920, he became the marine editor for the Seattle Daily Journal of Commerce, a position he held for two years.

From 1922 to 1932, Holden served as executive secretary for the Japan Society of Seattle, an organization established to improve economic and diplomatic ties between Japan and the United States. His efforts included co-authorship of the book, Japan: An Interpretation; drafting resolutions with the purpose of increasing immigration quotas of Japanese into the U.S.; and organizing various goodwill tours to Japan, such as the American Trade Commission Tour. In 1931, he spent three months visiting Japan, Korea and Manchuria. In conjunction with his work in the Pacific relations arena, he went to San Francisco in 1932, where he published a short-lived magazine called The Oriental Outlook.

Throughout the rest of his life, Holden maintained dual careers in journalism and politics. He ran unsuccessfully for a Republican seat in the Washington state legislature in 1932. In 1936, he became the political editor for the Spokane Spokesman-Review, a position he held for 21 years. While serving in this capacity, he covered the organizational meetings in San Francisco that resulted in the drafting of the United Nations charter in 1945. He also reported on the hearings held in 1948 by the Washington state legislature's Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities. It was during these hearings that the initial accusations of participation in communist activities were leveled against Alger Hiss.

Holden's political activities between 1956 and 1973 centered around the issue of compulsory unionism. He organized and worked as Executive Director of the Committee for Voluntary Unionism and he worked with affiliated groups like Job Research, Inc. and the National Right to Work Committee. These organizations coordinated efforts that resulted in placing right-to-work measures on the Washington ballot in 1956 and 1958. In conjunction with the National Right to Work Committee, the Washington organizations worked to prevent the repeal of section 14b of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allowed individual states to depart from national uniform labor policies.

For the second time, in 1960, Holden was unsuccessful in his bid for a seat in the Washington legislature. That same year, he served as an alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention held in Chicago. On a local level, Holden held the position of president of the Tonasket Chamber of Commerce in 1961 and 1962.

In addition to his political endeavors, Holden published the Tonasket Tribune, a joint venture with his son, Ashley, Jr. from 1959 to 1973. In 1962, State Representative John Goldmark filed a libel suit against Holden and three others, including also the Tonasket Tribune, for $225,000, charging that he had been libeled by an editorial, which exposed his left-wing liberal record in the state legislature where he had served three terms. This was 10 days before the state primary election in 1962, in which Goldmark was overwhelmingly defeated by the voters, ending his political career. He was succeeded by a more conservative Democrat. After the longest trial ever held in Okanogan county, Goldmark was awarded a verdict of $40,000 by the jury, but Judge Theodore S. Turner, before whom the case was tried, granted a motion by the defendants for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict. This was granted by the court and not only did Goldmark receive nothing, but he was required to pay all the costs of the trial. At the same time, a similar case in Alabama, in which a verdict for $100,000 had been awarded against the New York Times, had been reversed by the Supreme Court of the United States because there had been no evidence of malice shown in the trial. There was no evidence of malice in the Goldmark case.

In 1943, Holden filed a libel suit against Street & Smith, New York publishers of PIC magazine, in which had appeared an article branding Holden as a "pal of the Japs." This was while Holden's son, Ashley, Jr., was in uniform in the Philippines under General Douglas MacArthur. The case was heard by a jury in the federal district court in Spokane which awarded damages of $15,000 to Holden. In negotiations with the publishers after the trial this sum was reduced to $12,000 and paid in full when the publishers agreed not to appeal the case.

Further political activities included serving as state coordinator of The Conservative Caucus from 1975 to 1984, and as a delegate to the Washington State Republican Convention in 1978. Then in 1984, he was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in Dallas, Texas.

In 1975, Holden's wife Ruth, to whom he had been married for 60 years, passed away as the result of a stroke. In 1976, he married Emily E. Wilbanks, a former high school friend, and they lived in Bellevue, Washington. Also in 1976, he published a book entitled Saga of the Sagebrush, containing many of his editorials and columns written over a period of more than 50 years. (final four paragraphs supplied by Holden)