THE QUARTERLY OF THE Oregon Historical Society.

Volume IV.] MARCH, 1903 [Number 1

THE LEWIS AND CLARK CENTENNIAL. THE OCCASION AND ITS OBSERVANCE.

Much that seems favorable, and not a little that is clearly unfavorable, has come to the Lewis and Clark Centennial because its date is just a year later than that of the Louisiana Purchase Centennial. A striking advantage in this close succession is, however, still to be used. It is the idea of a centennial at Portland in the Columbia Valley in the very next year following one at Saint Louis on the Mississippi that needs to be exploited. In this close succession of these two centennials of the access of the American nationality to regions of which one lies far beyond the other we have the key to the fullest interpretation of the national significance of the anniversary of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Nothing else could so tellingly exhibit the basis for a peculiar national interest in our anniversary as the fact that it is virtually contemporary with that to be observed at Saint Louis. The purchase of Louisiana bears practically the same natal relation to the western half of the Mississippi Valley that the Lewis and Clark expedition does to the Pacific Northwest. This the average American citizen no doubt finds it hard to realize. Oregon, however, can boast age over the other commonwealths west of the Mississippi, excepting only Missouri and Iowa and they are barely older.

The western half of the Mississippi Valley has far outstripped us in material development. Nevertheless, considering the conditions of isolation under which the people of Oregon have labored they can be justly proud of the progress that has been made here in all lines of endeavor. Saint Louis will be justified in vaunting in 1904 the achievements and results of a century of development in the region of which she is the metropolis; but Portland, as the metropolis of the Pacific Northwest, would have been culpably derelict if she had not undertaken an observance of the centennial of the Lewis and Clark expedition that shall emphasize to the nation and to the world the significance of the occupation of the Pacific coast by the American people, and to foster the aspirations of one of the most favored sections on the face of the earth. The basis of our claim to a national recognition of our anniversary is something more solid than the fact that we have added what we have to the material strength of the nation. The secret of the unparalleled effort that Oregon proposes to make for the observance of the Lewis and Clark centennial lies deeper than a mere feeling of exultation over material development and the hope of advertising our resources to the world.

The Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition has clearly two unique and complementary missions. It should bring fully into the national consciousness the historic services through which this nation attained an outlook upon the Pacific comparable with that on the Atlantic, and the significance of this to the future of the American people. It should address itself to the peculiar problems of progress on this coast and thus mark an epoch in the added impetus, the better organization, and the higher aims it gives us as a people; rightly planned it would be an exposition of patriotic national services and of the problems of largest social progress—an exposition of western history and western problems.

The Lewis and Clark expedition and the Oregon movement, or the American movement to the Pacific, which the Lewis and Clark expedition initiated, have not yet had anything like an adequate interpretation in American history. Oregon represents the greatest opportunity in our national life—an opportunity that the fathers of Oregon made as well as seized. A sequel to the Oregon opportunity, or rather a part of it, were the immense gains south of the forty-second parallel on the Pacific Slope. Through the Oregon opportunity realized this American democracy has a territorial basis for supremacy among the nations of the world, and this nation and all mankind will profit from it to the end of time. The Louisiana Purchase was not an opportunity made, but only one accepted when it was tossed into the nation's lap. The Oregon opportunity, as it stands in history and in promise for the future—in what is realized and in what is only potential—is in its import only second to the American opportunity. It had to do with the winning of a domain that made our nation four-square and continental, with a national territory commensurate with the spirit and possibilities of the American people.

The development of the situation on this coast, which the Lewis and Clark expedition converted into America's opportunity, was something like this: Four hundred years ago this continent lay unoccupied save by a race destined to melt away before the onslaughts of the sturdier European. The Spaniard, schooled by eight centuries of crusading against the Moor, whom he had finally driven from Spanish soil, was in the moment of victory, when his hands were free and spirit exultant, pointed by Columbus the supposed way to the Indies, long-famed for unparalleled riches. Spanish hopes were high and the cavaliers came on.

They passed by the West Indies in quest of gold. Cortes and Pizarro found something of their hearts' desire in Mexico and Peru. So on they pressed down the west coast of South America and up the west coast of North America and across the Pacific; but the vigor of the Spaniard was about wasted. He hung helplessly to his outposts on the flanks of the Pacific Northwest. At the beginning of the last quarter of the eighteenth century he rallied and sent vessels up and down the coast of Oregon; but his explorations were not determinate, and they were not followed by occupation. Early in the eighteenth century the Muscovite, advancing eastward across Siberia, had reached the shores of the Pacific, and soon gained a foothold on our northern shores, with designs on all this coast. England, too, was ready to have a hand in the contest for this last great territorial prize on the North American continent. Elated by her decisive victories over her mortal enemy, France, and, by the treaty of Paris, 1763, the proud possessor of all of the eastern half of this continent, of India, mistress of the seas, conscious also of the great advantages that the invention of the steam engine, the power loom and other machinery gave her, she dispatched explorers to scan the different quarters of the globe for new possessions. Captain Cook outlined the shores of Australia and of many other lands of the south seas, and in 1778 was off the Oregon coast. At the same time enterprising Britons were pressing westward along the Great Lakes and overland toward this still available portion of the continent. Thus, the progressive nations of the world were closing in on this last choice imperial domain of the temperate zone awaiting a pre-emptor—the possessor of which would be the natural master of the Pacific. At this critical juncture the then young American nation was fortunate in the spirit of maritime enterprise among the merchants of Boston. Seeking the profits of trade in furs which the voyage of Cook had revealed, they sent Captains Gray and Kendrick to the North Pacific coast, and in 1792 Gray, in the ship Columbia, performed the feat that secured to this country priority of right to the basin of the Columbia. Still more fortunate was this country at this time in having the prescient mind of Thomas Jefferson devoted to its interests. While Gray's vessel was lying in the Columbia he was getting up a subscription for sending explorers overland to the Pacific. Even ten years before this he had proposed an expedition to the Pacific under the leadership of George Rogers Clark. He then had it in mind to head off an English enterprise of which he had heard; but it was not until 1803, twenty years after his first effort in this direction, that Jefferson succeeded in getting the means for the first and by far the most important of our national exploring expeditions—the Lewis and Clark.

But this was not simply an exploring expedition. It represents better than any other one event the expansion of this nation from the Mississippi to the Pacific. The expedition was great not merely even in what it symbolizes. It was grandly great in itself, in its inception, and in execution. It was the herald of the American democracy making its way across the continent to the Pacific, but it was more. There was the highest nobility of purpose in its inception, and matchless skill and fortitude in its execution. Not only in the train of its consequences, but in every aspect was it glorious and worthy of a national celebration. The burden of the special message of January 18, 1803, through which President Jefferson secured an appropriation for it, was the maintenance of the factory system, or the trading posts, among the Indian tribes of the west. Jefferson took keenest delight in a project to extend the bounds of knowledge and which he hoped would open a water route of commerce across the continent with Asia. Yet on the face of it the Lewis and Clark expedition had primarily its inception as a means for promoting the success of these government trading posts among the Indians. This governmental policy, connected with the administration of the factory system, was the one comprehensive, wise, and humane national effort to raise a lower race to the plane of civilization. The idea was to supply the Indian at cost, in exchange for his furs and other products, the implements of husbandry and the comforts of civilized life, at the same time to protect him from the demoralizing influences of the vicious among the white men. The Lewis and Clark expedition was thus in its origin associated with a work of the largest philanthropy, "a system," says Captain Chittenden, author of "The American Fur Trade in the Far West," "which, if followed out as it should have been, would have led the Indian to his new destiny by easy stages, and would have averted the long and bloody wars, corruption, and bad faith, which have gained for a hundred years of our dealings with the Indians the unenviable distinction of a 'Century of Dishonor.'"

In his instructions to the leaders of the expedition Jefferson showed the tenderest solicitude for the welfare of the red man. The expedition could not have been in better hands. Captain Chittenden says of it: "This celebrated performance stands as incomparably the most perfect achievement of its kind in the history of the world." Dr. Elliott Coues has this about it: "The story of this adventure stands easily first and alone. This is our national epic of exploration." To appreciate the unique skill of leadership in this expedition we need but compare its success with the wretched failure of the "Yellowstone Expedition" of 1820, which was to have gone over but a part of the route of Lewis and Clark. This had an outfit many times more expensive than that of Lewis and Clark and ten times as many men; but it went to pieces before it got beyond what is now Omaha.

Unique as the Lewis and Clark expedition was in its original purposes and in its execution, the Oregon people are sponsors for the celebration of its coming centennial anniversary mainly because of the consequences with which it was fraught. Theodore Roosevelt, in his "Winning of the West," speaks of it as opening "the door into the heart of the West." His book has the date mark "1896." It was written before the battle of Manila, and the treaty closing the Spanish-American war which placed the Philippines permanently under our care, before America's determining part in preserving the integrity of China after the quelling of the Boxer insurrection. It was written before President Roosevelt had set his eyes upon the Pacific Northwest. If, after the latter days of this month (May), he ever again has occasion to characterize the import of the Lewis and Clark expedition, his dictum will be more like this: "It led to the acquisition of the whole Pacific Coast, containing the fairest and richest regions under the American flag, and made inevitable the American mastery of the Pacific and American supremacy among the nations of the world." It is, surely, not preposterous to expect a revision of the verdict of history on the significance of the Lewis and Clark expedition. Henry Adams, than whom no scholar has done better work on the history of the United States, in volume IV of his history, with date mark, 1890, speaks of the Lewis and Clark expedition in this wise: "The crossing of the continent was a great feat, but it was nothing more. * * Great gains to civilization could be made only on the Atlantic coast under the protection of civilized life." Mr. Adams in this estimate seems wholly blind to the fact that nations like individuals have opportunities presented to them which seized may not give immediate results but which have an ever increasing influence upon their destiny. In the Lewis and Clark expedition this nation took the flood tide to world supremacy. Three years ago, when American arms and diplomacy were exercising such a determining influence on the problem of mankind in China, I heard Prof. F. J. Turner of the University of Wisconsin, the highest authority on western history, who writes so forcibly on the Louisiana Purchase in the current number of the Review of Reviews, say, that "the occupation of the Pacific Coast by the American people was not only the greatest event in American history, but a great event in all history."

That the American movement Oregonward and Pacificward followed strictly in the wake of the Lewis and Clark expedition has many proofs. Even before Lewis and Clark reached Saint Louis on their homeward journey they met parties of traders and trappers bound for the heart of the wilderness from which they were returning. These were acting on the information Lewis and Clark had sent back from their Mandan winter quarters. A few months after they reached Saint Louis the Missouri Fur Company was organized to conduct operations on the Upper Missouri, that is, on the trail of Lewis and Clark. Four years later John Jacob Astor organized the Pacific Fur Company, and devised plans including a great emporium at the mouth of the Columbia, trade with China on the west, with the Russian settlements on the north, and a line of trading posts overland on the Lewis and Clark route. Astor's scheme was a feasible one, but the war of 1812 came on and England dispatched a vessel to capture the American post on the Columbia. Before this reached Astoria the British sympathizers among Astor's partners sold him out. Astor was probably the first to have a vision not only of what the nation was to gain on this coast, but also of what more might have been gained had President Madison been as bold in regard to his enterprise as was Jefferson in the Louisiana purchase. Had this been so Captain Chittenden thinks "the political map of North America would not be what it is to-day," implying that there would have been an uninterrupted American Pacific coast line from the extreme north to the Mexican boundary.

So far our rights to the region were based on priority in discovery, in exploration, and in occupation; but now for a period of thirty years the British Hudson Bay Company was to have almost undisputed possession. However, the rights established by Gray, Lewis and Clark, and Astor did not lapse and could not be set aside through occupation by a mere trading company. During nearly all of this thirty-year period the Boston schoolmaster, Hall J. Kelley, was agitating the colonization of Oregon, and in 1832, and again in 1834, Nathaniel J. Wyeth, with herculean effort, indomitable perseverance, and incredible energy led expeditions to the Columbia only to meet with disaster when with his slender means he was pitted against the mighty corporation in possession here. With Wyeth came the first party of missionaries. The "Mountain Men"—retired trappers—soon followed, seeking homes here; and, beginning with 1842, annual migrations of thousands of Oregon pioneers were on the way. The Lewis and Clark exploration had thus led to a national movement—"the migration of a people," says Captain Chittenden, "seeking to avail itself of opportunities which have come but rarely in the history of the world, and which will never come again." The route traced by these Oregon pioneers will some day be restored as a national memorial highway, and will be celebrated in song and story, every mile of which has the tenderest associations of hardship and suffering, but also of high purpose and stern determination; and yet the Oregon trail was in the strictest sense a derivative of the Lewis and Clark trail. For nearly twenty years the Lewis and Clark route up the Missouri River had been the only one used to reach the Rocky-mountain wilderness, but in the fall of 1823 a party of trappers, pushing westward from the Yellowstone and desirous of avoiding the implacable Blackfeet on the Upper Missouri, turned to the south and discovered in South Pass, an easy crossing of the Rocky Mountains. The region beyond on the headwaters of the Green and Snake rivers, and in the basin of the Great Salt Lake, was found to be rich in furs. Henceforth to some point in this region the annual cavalcades of the fur companies would come and there meet their own trappers, the free trappers, and the Indians of all the interior country. This was the annual rendezvous for trading, for the delivery of the season's catch of furs, and for equipment for the next year's activity. In making this annual round trip from Saint Louis the original route into this transmontane country, the half-circle route along the Missouri, was naturally abandoned for a great cut-off from the western borders of Missouri to the South Pass. A direct route northwestward across the plains of present Kansas and Nebraska to the Platte, up the Platte and the North Fork and its tributary, the Sweetwater, was found to be the finest natural highway in the world. To reach Oregon the pioneers took this great cut off of the Lewis and Clark trail, and from its western terminus on the upper waters of the Snake they had but to follow the route of Hunt's Astor party until the original Lewis and Clark trail was struck again on the Columbia. The Lewis and Clark trail was thus the basis from which was developed the Oregon trail.

During the forties, when the national movement was setting strongly towards the Pacific, Oregon was an uppermost subject in the thought, and frequently in the plans, of a large portion of the people of this country. Oregon pioneers were clinching our hold upon the Pacific coast. The party slogan of "fifty-four forty or fight" in 1844 had response deep in the hearts of a great majority of the people of the northern part of the Mississippi Valley, and stirred the whole nation. American influences and activities in California from 1846 on radiated mainly from Oregon. Captain Fremont was sent out originally to explore the best route to Oregon, and went to California from Oregon. William Marshall, the discoverer of gold in California in 1848 was an Oregon pioneer of 1844. Peter H. Burnett, the first governor of California, was an Oregon pioneer of 1843. The exclusion of slave labor from the mines of California was largely due to the "Columbia-river men." But now at the close of the forties came the diversion of the national interest from Oregon amounting almost to an eclipse of Oregon for some fifty years. The annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, the gold discovery in California, the opening of the Kansas and Nebraska lands, the civil war, the development of the manufacturing industries, the occupation of the Dakotas, absorbed in turn the main attention and energies of the nation, leaving outlying Oregon in comparative obscurity, with resources developing but slowly.

Oregon's day, however, is dawning again. America's surplus energy is no longer absorbed in gold mining in California, in occupying the plains of Kansas, Nebraska, or the Dakotas. The overloaded passenger trains to the Pacific Northwest tell unmistakably the nation's need of this region. It needs our farm lands. It will more and more urgently need our lumber and our water power and our outlook upon the Pacific; and to whom do the American people owe the possession of these incomparable and growing boons but to Lewis and Clark and to the pioneers to whom Lewis and Clark pointed the way. Governor Chamberlain was right the other night when at Boise he spoke of the Lewis and Clark expedition as Jefferson's greatest act. Alongside the two inscriptions on Jefferson's monument selected by him, namely, that he was the author of the Declaration of Independence and that he was the founder of the University of Virginia, posterity will fain inscribe the fact that he was the promoter and organizer of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

The observance of the Lewis and Clark Centennial, therefore, is an occasion in which the American people as a whole and through their government have the largest reasons for generous participation. For great was the Oregon opportunity to the nation and the Lewis and Clark expedition was the key that opened it. All honor from the nation at large is due to those who made this national opportunity and seized it. The possession of the Pacific coast was the corollary and sequel to the Oregon movement; but the Oregon movement itself was corollary to nothing less than the spirit and vigor of the American people and their foothold upon this continent.

We have, then, a national occasion second only to that of Philadelphia in 1876; and the first great mission of the centennial will be realized when its occasion has been so interpreted and enforced that a hearty and liberal participation in the celebration on the part of the nation has been secured so that our American national consciousness may fully realize what has been "the course of empire" with us as a nation and what it is almost certain to be in the future.

The accomplishment of the other mission of the exposition requires a true interpretation of the problem of largest progress for the Pacific Northwest. Expositions worthy of the name can not be "hit or miss" affairs. They are not mere congeries of remarkable products. An exposition should have an organic unity and a distinct aim. Its aim must bear directly on the highest interests of the supporting community. There are peculiar reasons for the exercise of the highest degree of care and insight in the organization of the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition. No people ever before invested so heavily in proportion to their means as Portland and Oregon propose to invest in the Lewis and Clark Centennial. No exposition was ever held in a community so plastic, so completely in the making as are Portland and Oregon. The current of common thought and effort is so strongly set toward the Lewis and Clark Centennial that the very cast of Oregon's civilization in the future will surely come from what is realized in that event. The exposition will leave an inspired, unified, and enlightened people, with ideals newly defined and elevated; or it will be followed by more or less of humiliation, factional strife, disgrace, blighting discouragement, with sordid ideals and disordered social relations.

Most auspicious was Oregon's response to the idea of a celebration. Stronger faith in the good that may come from unity in action toward higher things no other people has ever shown; and why should not Oregon have faith in greater things for herself and the Pacific Northwest? The Pacific Northwest bears almost exactly the same relation to the rest of the nation east of us geographically, historically, and economically that Greece bore to the Orient, and that England bore to the continental nations of Europe.

I take it, then, that the normal attitude towards the exposition project is one that regards it as a serious undertaking, having tremendous possibilities for making or marring much in the future of Oregon. The exposition comes when Oregon is just at the flood tide of new opportunities—opportunities that require twentieth century enlightenment on the part of the masses if these opportunities are to yield anything like unmixed good. Just as the Lewis and Clark expedition was the key that opened the Oregon opportunity to the nation so is the Lewis and Clark Centennial admirably adapted to become the key to open the way to the highest development of industrial democracy in the Pacific Northwest and to realize its leadership in social progress on this continent. We have, I think, a fine example given us by the authorities of Louisiana Purchase Exposition of how to plan definitely an exposition to accomplish a great purpose. The main idea with them is to make a world's fair for the first time represent the world in epitome as a "going concern." They thus express their main purpose: "As to the lesson for the world, the Directorate desire to make a leading point. It is to show life and movement. * * An attempt will be made to put the world before the eye of the visitor, each exhibit being so displayed as to make plain its story, its purpose, and its aim." And again: "The Department of Education is made the first department of the classification in accordance with the theory upon which the entire exposition is founded. * * * Through education man comes to a knowledge of his powers, and of the possibilities of life, and upon it are dependent the processes which extend throughout all the fields of industry. This correlation of the powers of the brain and of the hand of man, extending throughout the entire exhibit scheme of the exposition, will, for the first time in the history of expositions, afford a strictly scientific basis for the collection and classification of objects." And finally: "At Saint Louis, the prevailing characteristic, it is intended, shall be life and motion, and the installation of products and processes in juxtaposition. The classification is based upon this plan, and its effects upon the proportions of the buildings is noticeable in that Machinery Hall is relatively so small in area. The machines through whose operation raw material is converted into use and the processes employed in utilizing natural products will be exhibited, so that not only will the fund of human information be greatly increased, but suggestion will be made to students, scientists, and inventors that will give still greater development to genius in the following than in the preceding decade."

The World's Fair, in this carefully planned purpose, affords a fine model for the Lewis and Clark Exposition. But Portland is not simply to do for the Pacific Northwest and the other peoples in close economic and commercial relations with it what Saint Louis aspires to do for the world. Saint Louis undertakes what was distinctively the nineteenth century problem—that of mastery by man of the physical forces of the world and of more nearly perfect adjustment to his natural environment. The Louisiana Purchase Exposition, with its World Congress of the Arts and Sciences, and all of its exhibits arranged to promote the development of invention and the application of scientific methods to industry, has a great mission; and yet the peculiar field which belongs to the Lewis and Clark Exposition gives it, if not a greater mission, at least one more advanced—if you please a twentieth century mission. Man in the Pacific Northwest has a peculiar problem. All the science and art of the past are his legacy. They fairly press in upon him in their appeal to him for utilization here. Man here has a physical environment so rich and so diversified as not only to invite the largest application of science and art, but also one that demands the highest organization of associated effort. In other words, the Pacific Northwest places man in such relation to history, to nature, and to his fellow-man, as to promise him here, if his inheritance is not sold for a mess of pottage, man's highest development. It rests with the Lewis and Clark Exposition to rise to the occasion. For it represents a first possible step in a grand cooperative effort to develop a social environment here commensurate with what nature has done for us. If for a ruthless, wasteful course of social evolution that would never reach any desirable goal we would realize one of steady, frictionless progress, with opportunities of fullest life open to all, we must make the Lewis and Clark Centennial fulfill its high mission. If the people of Oregon and the Pacific Northwest do not persist in their determination to make this concerted effort toward the inauguration of the highest policies of social progress here it is hard to see what occasion can bring them so near this mood again. It is the spell that the commemoration of a great event and a great movement casts over them that will hardly be repeated. The Lewis and Clark Centennial then is the flood tide of opportunity. If it is not seized and we lapse again into mere individualistic policies "all the voyage" of life in the future of the Pacific Northwest will be bound in comparative "shallows and in miseries."

An exposition planned to meet the twentieth century needs becomes the herald of an industrial democracy in which there is a completely harmonious cooperation for the realization of the highest social ideals. It is dawning upon us that publicity is the first condition of relief from the trust evil. We need yet, however, to realize that essential publicity or light is the talisman for developing a true democratic spirit to which are disclosed ever expanding vistas of possibilities. The first great duty of the exposition authorities is to bring to the people of the Pacific Northwest the largest enlightenment on the natural resources of this region. Taking our timber resources as an illustration, we are painfully aware that the timber holdings are not as widely and equably distributed among the masses as one could wish; but we have many rich natural monopolies which the whole people should share. They have common and incalculable permanent interests in the forests of Oregon, in the water power of our streams, in our facilities for irrigation, in the mines, and in the ensemble of natural beauty here. Shall the great natural forest areas in Oregon which may become the source of an ever increasing flow of wealth for all time for the whole people be allowed, without state forestry activity, to become mere waste places for weed trees? We are told by Mr. Elwood Mead, Chief of the Division of Irrigation, that he believes Oregon "has the largest area of unimproved land whereon irrigation is possible of any State in the Union." Here is a great interest in which most fortunately a policy of coöperation between the state and the nation has been instituted. What could be more propitious for the good fortune of the people than an active coöperation between the authorities of the exposition and the United States bureaus of forestry, irrigation, and the United States geological survey in preparing an exhibit of the data on the interests of the people of the State in these natural resources? With such definite, earnest, and laudable purposes in view, Congress and the Administration would respond to the claims of the Lewis and Clark Exposition in a very different spirit from that with which they have met recent expositions.

By means of models, relief maps, photographs, drawings, charts, and graphic representations generally, along with congresses and the discussions by the press, the people, and their legislators, would come to take an intelligent and far-sighted view of these great inheritances of theirs. A whole summer given to the exposition of the people's interests in their common heritage, with the use of the best art of illustration, representation, and elucidation, would awaken a living interest so that they would make sure of their rights, conserve an equality of opportunities and make our natural resources yield their highest social utility. Our experience with our state school lands shows that such a fortunate condition is absolutely impossible without the influence an exposition could exert toward an enlightenment on our public inheritances.

The Municipal Exposition at Dresden, Germany, during this summer, gives a suggestion for a municipal department for our exposition that would work a transformation in our civic spirit and enlightenment. How glorious it would be for Oregon if the Lewis and Clark Fair Clubs would in dead earnest determine to possess themselves of the philosophy of city making, and to do their best to control municipal activity in Oregon so as to make it conserve highest economic and æsthetic ends and bring about rational unity in all municipal development and foster an architectural spirit. Why not commission a delegate to Dresden? Why not begin to make wholesome, beautiful, and edifying the Oregon village and city, so that, as a whole, each may be a positive joy forever? The same strenuous idealism would find a rich field in the affairs of our counties and of our school districts. The Oregon farm must come in for as many meliorating influences as the Oregon town. All that good roads, graded schools, traveling libraries, neighborhood telephones, and model farm establishments can do to elevate the social conditions of farm life will be greatly furthered by the exposition; but the problem that is fundamental with the people, both of the town and of the country, pertains not merely to sharing the unearned increment of the natural and artificial monopolies, but also to participation in the gains of all capitalized industry. It is the problem of "peopleizing" the industries. Corporate organization and management should be a department of the exposition. By the elimination of all the unnecessary risk in investments in corporation securities through effective governmental regulation and supervision the people may gain control and reap the large profits of capitalized industry. The exposition will have its highest mission in securing to the people an interest in the gains and a share in the control of our industrial organizations.

The next generation of Oregonians will not be found wanting in their ardor for the welfare of the state as a whole, in patriotic zeal for the betterment of all the conditions of life here and in aspiration to give the Pacific Northwest leadership in social progress if the schools are furnished the story of the Oregon opportunity as it was made and realized. This, as told by the actors themselves, should be compiled and distributed to the districts. The highest pitch of emulation to the mastery of this story and interest in the aims of the exposition may advisedly be secured by a system of prize essays on important topics pertaining to Oregon's development.

This outline of the features that the exposition might include does not debar from it popular and recreative attractions. It does not slur the exhibition of the remarkable products of the farm, the orchard, the mine, the river, the forests, and the factory. The ideas emphasized will only give these products multiplied significance, bringing them into vital relations with life that is more than meat, drink, and wear. An exposition thus rationally planned will be the poor man's greatest hope. If he loses the aid it would give him toward the right solution of the social problem the odds are terribly against him in the race for an equitable distribution. Such an exposition would go far toward securing an open door to an equality of opportunity for all in Oregon. To block the organization of such an exposition would not be far from social suicide for the masses.

The dominance of economic forces in progress is becoming more and more exclusive. It devolves upon the people to comprehend fully the living forces, and, by comprehending them, put themselves in position to control them and mold them to the higher uses of conserving an equality of opportunity for all. The Lewis and Clark Exposition lends itself wholly to this great mission. It is hard to see how a means quite so propitious will be available again.

F. G. YOUNG.

THE EDUCATIONAL HISTORY OF ASTORIA, OREGON.

The study of the school history of Astoria is of interest to the student of education in that it reveals a condition different from that of some of the other cities of Oregon, particularly those of the Willamette Valley. In the latter, private and public schools struggled for the mastery, with the private school far in the lead for many years.[1] In Astoria, on the contrary, the public school idea had a firm hold from the beginning and asserted itself as soon as the establishment of a public school was possible. The history of Astoria's educational progress, covering a period of fifty-two years, is chiefly the story of the beginning and gradual development of a system of public schools. There is traceable, however, something of the conflict, so prominent elsewhere, between the public and the private school idea.

PRIVATE SCHOOLS.

Astoria's first school, started in 1851, was of necessity private, owing to the fact that the school law, passed in 1849, was practically inoperative, and, in consequence, no public money was available. In the summer of 1851 the Rev. C. O. Hosford, a Methodist minister, at the earnest solicitation of some dozen parents, opened a school near the corner of Eighth and Bond streets, in a small two-room building, erected for use as dwelling house for the teacher, and schoolhouse.[2] This little pioneer school had an enrollment of ten pupils, and was supported by private subscription. Public sentiment favored a public school, and its modifying influence is seen at this time. No tuition was charged the individual pupil, but the parents contributed toward the support of the school each according to his means rather than in proportion to the number of children he sent to the school. Mr. V. Boelling, in addition to furnishing the schoolhouse and residence for the teacher free of charge, contributed twenty of the forty dollars paid monthly to the teacher.[3] The school was in session during the months of June, July, August, and September.[4]

It is probable that between the closing of this school and the starting of the public school proper there were other semi-public schools.[5] Private schools were a necessity in Upper Astoria, owing to the small number of families there and the lack of means of communication between the two parts of the town. There were at least two private schools here prior to 1859, and they were patronized by the children of three families.[6] That this was done in at least one case from necessity, rather than choice, is shown by the fact that one of the patrons of these schools, T. P. Powers, a few years later, was the prime mover in the establishment of the Upper Astoria public school.[7] Miss Pope and Mrs. H. B. Morse were two of the teachers employed in these schools.

In 1864 the first school that was in any sense a rival of the public school was started. The Grace Church Parish School became the rallying point for the first opposition to public education. This support alone would perhaps not have been sufficient to maintain it; but it also filled a place in the educational field which the public school seemed unable to occupy. That there was a real need for the school is apparent from the class of pupils that attended it. Large pupils who, owing to lack of early advantages, were far behind in their classes and who would have preferred to remain away rather than be classed with children much younger than themselves, and pupils advanced beyond the studies offered at the time by the district school, made up a large part of the number in attendance.[8] Latin, algebra, natural philosophy, and other advanced subjects were taught, and pupils for these studies came from the public school which had just previous to this time decided to exclude all branches beyond those usually taught in a district school.[9]

This school was opened in the old "Methodist Church" situated on the corner of Fifteenth Street and Franklin Avenue, and was in charge of the rector of the Episcopal Church, Rev. T. H. Hyland. Mrs. Hyland, who had been a teacher in the East, taught most of the classes.[8] The school was supported entirely by tuition fees which were $7 per quarter of thirteen weeks. Three quarters were taught each year, and the attendance ranged between twenty and thirty pupils.[8]

Rev. Mr. Hyland was appointed to the Astoria parish while it was a missionary station and so received no salary from the home congregation. The parish school was started chiefly as a means of revenue to help pay for the maintenance of the church.[8] Former pupils testify to the excellence of the school and to the popularity of its founders and teachers.

In 1866 the school moved to the rear of the church on Commercial Street, between Eighth and Ninth, and continued regularly until the departure of Rev. Mr. Hyland and wife in 1878.[8]

During the fall and winter of 1876-77 a night school, at which bookkeeping, writing, and arithmetic were taught, was taught by Mr. Kincaid in the Gray building.[10]

In 1878 there were at least four private schools in Astoria. Mrs. Maxwell Young taught a school of twenty-five pupils in a building where St. Mary's Hospital stands.[11] Miss Cora VanDusen taught a summer session in the building near the southeast corner of Tenth and Duane streets, which was rented by the school board and furnished to Miss VanDusen free of charge during the vacation of the public school.[12] When the public school opened in the fall this school was moved to the room formerly occupied by the parish school. Professor Worthington, principal of the public school, taught a private school of six pupils. The fourth private school was taught by Miss Johnson.

The increase in the number of private schools was due to two causes: dissatisfaction in some quarters with some action of the principal of the "lower town school,"[11] and the great increase in the school population. The latter cause was no doubt the more potent. At this time there were over five hundred children of school age in Astoria.

In 1881-82 Miss Hewett conducted a private school at Grace Church, with an average attendance of twenty-six pupils and an enrollment of forty-six.

From 1886 to 1895 Miss Emma C. Warren conducted a private school on Exchange Street, between Eleventh and Twelfth. This was by far the largest and most pretentious private school ever opened in Astoria, and yet represented only to a very small degree the idea antagonistic to the public school. All the grammar grades were taught, and also classes in advanced subjects, including Latin and German.[13] This school occupied to a great extent the place that should have been filled by a public high school. With the establishment of the high school in 1890-91 its field of usefulness was greatly limited, and in 1895 it was merged into the high school by the employment of the principal, Miss Warren, as the head of the department of English and English Literature, and the entrance of most of the pupils of Miss Warren's school into the high school.[13]

THE PUBLIC SCHOOL.

The earliest schools of Astoria were supported by private funds, yet the payment of any fixed sum was not made a condition for entrance. They were supported by private subscription for the benefit of all the children of the town.

In 1854 District No. 1 was established, and included a large tract of land bounded by Young's River, from the falls to its juncture with Columbia, the Columbia River and a zigzag line starting near Thirty-eighth Street, and connecting the Columbia River with the Young's River Falls.[14] To this district, in October of the same year, was paid the sum of $20, all the school money then available.[14] The next year, under the revised law of 1853-54, the county fund yielded more, and District No. 1 received $104.77. A part of this amount was from tax, and the rest from fines.[14]

The first school taught after the district was organized, as near as can be ascertained (there are no records in existence), was taught in what was known as the "Old Methodist Church,"[15] a building erected in 1853-54,[16] on a piece of land donated for church and school purposes,[17] by James Welch, to the trustees of the Methodist Church. J. W. Wayne was probably the first teacher in the district. Nothing is known of the condition of the school, except that there were very few in attendance, and the school was in session only a very few months. Miss Liza Lincoln, Mrs. Hill, an English lady, and Mr. Moore, are names associated with the early schools, but the exact time of their service is not known, but all taught school some time before 1856.

In that year Judge A. A. Skinner took charge of the public school in a building near Bain's Mill, known as the "Holman House."[18] He was assisted by Mrs. Skinner, nee Miss Lincoln. The next year the public school was taught by Mr. Brown in the "old hospital" building, situated between Ninth and Tenth streets, on Duane. Mr. Brown is remembered for his skill in handling the large boys.[18] He was succeeded by Mr. Maxwell.

Up to this time the district had been without a schoolhouse, but in 1859 a building was erected on the corner of Ninth and Exchange streets. J. T. Maulsby taught the first term of school in it in 1860. The school was now too large for one teacher and the following year the board engaged the services of J. D. Deardorff and wife. He was a man of ability in his line of work and was well liked by both parents and pupils.[18] During the next term he was assisted by Mrs. Dr. Owens-Adair,[19] and the year following by Mr. Williamson,[18] a college bred man, who assisted much in building up the reputation of the school. Under Mr. Deardorff's management a nine or ten months' term was taught each year, and there were between ninety and one hundred pupils in attendance.[20] Astoria was maintaining an expensive school, and the money for its support was raised almost entirely by tax and private subscription,[20] as the money from the county school fund was inconsiderable at this time. This fund yielded to the district $132.50 in 1861, $149.80 in 1862, and $92.85 in 1863.[21] There is no record of tuition ever having been charged the pupils of the district. While Mr. Deardorff taught advanced classes were formed and pupils who had finished the ordinary grades of the school were enabled to continue their education.[22] Later opposition to these classes arose and finally the school board decided that only studies of the grammar grade should be taught. When this order was carried into effect, during Mr. R. K. Warren's term as teacher, a vigorous protest was made against it, and its enforcement caused much dissatisfaction.[22]

The Grace Church Parish School had just been organized, and, no doubt, profited by the dissension in the ranks of the friends of the public school. The increasing burden of maintaining the school and the presence of the parish school ready to receive the advanced pupils, gave strength to the position of those who were opposed to teaching branches above the grade of the ordinary district school.

In 1865 there was an average attendance of one hundred and ten pupils and a nine months' term.[23] This year the four districts of the county received $460.72 from the county fund and raised $2,308.49 by district tax.[##23]

In 1868-69 the average attendance in the public schools had dropped to eighty-four,[24] caused, in all probability, by the exclusion of the advanced classes and their transfer to the Grace Church Parish School.

Mr. Finlayson and wife and Professor Robb were the teachers between 1865 and 1869. From 1869 to 1873 very little change in the condition of the school is noted, except that there was a slight increase in attendance due to the return to the policy of providing instruction for all who had finished the grammar grades. In 1872 the state school fund became available and District No. 1 received $110.80 in coin and $111.95 in currency.[14]

In 1873 Prof. W. L. Worthington, a very able instructor, was elected principal, and remained several years. More than one hundred children were in attendance in 1873,[25] and the citizens of Astoria were justly proud of their school. The Astorian in its initial number[25] says: "We notice that the school is well supplied with maps, charts, dictionaries, gazetteers, atlases, etc. We doubt that any common school in Oregon is better supplied with such articles. * * The public school affords every opportunity for getting a good English education." The teachers were Professor Worthington, principal; Miss Watt and Miss Lawrence, assistants.[25]

The history from 1873 is concerned chiefly with the rapid increase in the school population, the division of the district into six separate districts, the subsequent consolidation of all these districts, the final readjustment of the boundaries, so as to include only the schools within the corporate limits of Astoria, and the establishment of the high school, as the completion of the city's educational system.

District No. 9, the "Upper Astoria" district, was established in 1868, but no school was taught here until 1874. Mrs. W. W. Parker, who taught the first term of school in the district, had a school of fifteen pupils, and received as compensation $75 per month and board.[26] T. P. Powers organized the district, and when over seventy years of age taught a term of three months in this district in order that the right to draw school money should not be forfeited.

The population of Astoria in the two years between 1874-76 nearly doubled, owing to the rapid growth of the fishing industry, and the schools were not able to keep pace with this growth.[27] In 1878 there were over two hundred pupils in actual attendance at the "lower schoolhouse." Professor Worthington, the principal, was assisted by Miss Brown, Miss McGregor, Miss Neale, and Miss Hewett.[28] In the first, or highest grade, algebra, physiology, and natural philosophy were taught.[28] The Astorian says of the school: "The public school of Astoria is divided into three grades, with three classes in each grade. There has been a written examination in three of the grades [probably classes]. In this examination great care has been taken to make it impossible for the pupils to derive any assistance from text-books or from friends."[28]

This crowded condition lasted until 1880 when a temporary relief was afforded by the establishment of District No. 9 and the building of two of the six rooms of the Shirely school. A ten-mill tax was levied for this purpose.

The sudden increase in the school population brought with it such a large proportion of the county and state school fund that the money from this source, amounting to $1,953.67,[29] paid the entire cost of the school during the year 1876, the six-mill tax not having been used. "The district is now out of debt, and has $250 cash on hand."[30]

The erection of a new school building was the main question before the taxpayers at the school meeting of 1882. That it was a necessity was admitted by all. The Astorian said editorially: "There are three things Astoria needs—and we place them in their relative importance—a new schoolhouse, a flouring mill, and a new theater."[31]

At the meeting held April 24, 1882, four mills for current expenses and five mills for building purposes were levied and a new schoolhouse ordered built.[32] The present McClure is the result of that meeting.

District No. 26, known locally as Alderbrook, was established in 1890.

By a legislative act of 1892 the four districts, now included in the city schools, together with the schools at John Days and Walluski, were consolidated into one district of the first class. This arrangement proved unsatisfactory, and in 1899 the boundaries were again changed so as to exclude the two districts lying outside the corporate limits of the city.

During the fifty years that the public school system has been in existence the school population has increased an hundredfold. The distance between "upper" and "lower" Astoria, the rapid growth of the town during the seventies, made the division of the district almost a necessity. The gradual growing together of the two parts of the town making the interchange of classes possible and the consequent improvement of the schools with a lessening of the expense of maintaining them led to the consolidation in 1893 and the readjustment of the boundaries in 1899.

THE HIGH SCHOOL.

The high school is the result of a slow growth and its continued existence is due perhaps as much to indifference as to any very active sentiment in its favor. It started as an advanced grade of the public school when for financial reasons it was desired to keep as many pupils as possible in attendance. The presence of the large pupils and the quality of the work done gave the school a standing in outside districts and created a feeling of pride in the citizens of the town. The higher classes were disbanded in 1863 or 1864. The Marine Gazette thus comments: "During the past week we have noticed considerable discussion in doors and out about the village district school. * * It was generally admitted that the school of eighteen months ago, I think it was—at any rate the one that contained all the larger boys and girls of the village with several others from Clatsop Plains, Oysterville, etc.,—was the best school we had had for three years or even a longer period. * * About the time named the teacher was restricted as to the amount or kind of instruction to be given in the school to the so-called advanced pupils. This restriction caused the disbanding or dismissal of several classes of the largest and oldest pupils. They quit the school, dispersed, went home, or to other schools distant to our town."[33] Advanced studies were restored later and became a recognized part of the course of study. The high school sentiment, stimulated no doubt by the record of the public for excellence in the past and to some extent by the desire to keep pace with the standard of scholarship set by the private schools, increased and resulted in the establishment of the present efficient high school in 1890 and 1891.

The grammar schools are loyally supported in spite of the high rate of taxation[34] necessary to maintain them; but there is still a well defined sentiment against the maintenance of the high school at public expense, though this sentiment seems to be decreasing.

WHAT THE SCHOOL HISTORY OF ASTORIA REVEALS.

The earliest schools were semi-public, though supported entirely by private subscription. Public sentiment clearly favored the public school and secured its establishment so soon as conditions, including the necessary school laws, made it possible. The reason for the predominance of this sentiment in favor of the public schools can be found in the fact that many of the leaders in the development of the city came from the northern and middle western states, where the idea of public education had a firm hold. V. Boelling, S. T. McKean, W. W. Parker, Col. James Taylor, and later Capt. George Flavel, Mrs. H. B. Parker, John Hobson and many others were earnest advocates and liberal supporters of public schools.

The public school has had an almost uninterrupted growth from the beginning, and to-day shows the result of half a century of effort.

ALFRED A. CLEVELAND.

AN OBJECT LESSON IN PATERNALISM

Even among those who have devoted their lives to the study of sociological problems, there is much difference of opinion as to the quantitative and qualitative influence of certain social conditions in producing the generally admitted bad or adverse phases of human society.

At one time we read that poverty degrades men morally, and we peruse carefully prepared and apparently veracious tables showing that in the older countries there is an unfailing correspondence between criminal statistics and the price of bread; the per cent of offenses against persons and property increasing with the cost of the necessaries of life and diminishing with the amount of human exertion required to obtain them. Such is the generally received opinion of the common people, and we hear from the political platform and see in the publications of reform parties the assertion that it is useless to preach morals to those whose minds are mainly occupied in devising means to keep the wolf from the door.

Those of our citizens who have given special attention to the debauching effects of the drink habit, call upon all to come to the rescue of American homes and American institutions, by banishing the American saloon, to which comes the response that poverty is the principal cause of intemperance and its incidents, and that the first duty of patriots is to remove poverty.

Equally certain and circumstantial, on the other hand, are those who affirm that there is no necessary connection between poverty and criminality, and that, as a general rule, debauchery and consequent decadence of moral faculty go hand in hand with material prosperity; and if mixed coincidence can establish casual connection, they are not at fault, for long before Goldsmith wrote of the time "When wealth accumulates and men decay," keen eyed observers had connected a general laxity of morals with the abundance and diffusion of wealth. The failure of intertropical countries to furnish high grade men of morals and intellect, Doctor Draper attributes, not more to the enervating influence of heat, than to the ease with which human beings supply themselves with the necessaries of life. Coming down to the present period, it is common knowledge—the expanding profligacy and criminality of the mining camps where men could obtain extravagant wages in gold for services which in other pursuits would yield them a scanty living.

Probably from such lump comparisons and crude observations, under complex conditions, have arisen two schools of social economists, one whose principal and primary aim is to abolish poverty as the chief obstacle in the way of human progress, and the other whose purpose is not definitely stated, but which conservatively clings to the laissez faire doctrine of letting every man's condition depend upon his individual exertion; and as so far, in the world's history, poverty has been the condition of the great mass of mankind, in spite of individual exertion, the anti-poverty school of necessity, must resort to collective or state control of the industries of men, and thus relieve them from want and the fear of want, which are thought to be so depressing upon their energies.

Just how or to what extent the state is to interfere with the individual's management of himself, or to what extent or in what manner he shall be relieved when he has failed to provide for his own wants and the wants of those depending upon him, are at present outside of any satisfactorily practical programme, and hence collectivism may be held to include all socialistic schemes from Bellamy up or down.

In fact, collectivism is entered upon the moment the state is organized, for in the rudest criminal code there is a manifest attempt to relieve the individual from the otherwise caution and care necessary to defend his person and property; and in truth, as government has advanced, so has collectivism advanced, until now in the United States of America the commonwealth is giving children primary education, supporting and caring for the deaf, blind, idiotic, insane, and criminal classes, beside stimulating certain industries with bounties upon production or relieving them from the disastrous effects of free competition, by levying taxes upon competing products. It does much more. Commerce and agriculture have been relieved of their old time dread of the elements, for government now keeps watch and ward over the wind and waves, and gives timely notice of approaching disaster by land and sea. In the endeavor to pass benefits around, hatcheries for fish, experiment stations, laboratories, and various commissions have been organized and conducted at public expense; likewise the mails are carried, the public lands distributed to actual settlers or given to railroad companies, patents issued to inventors, bounties paid for the destruction of wild animals, noxious weeds exterminated, public officers appointed to examine food products, to conduct experiments upon flocks and herds, and to destroy those infected with contagious diseases.

All this and much more are the results of collectivism, and there seems to be a constant tendency, as well as a constant demand, for more in the same direction. Individualism is alarmed and socialism hopeful; the former, at the encroachments upon personal liberty and the discouragement of personal exertion, and the latter, from the prospect of a complete disappearance of the competitive principle from social life.

Here are two violent antagonisms, while there is no line of demarcation between them, as well defined as the most tortuous isothermal crossing the American continent. There is no scientific boundary of government. As between the two disputants it is a blind push and pull, in which neither party is satisfied with the result. There are gradations upon either side, and long ago Herbert Spencer became alarmed at the coming slavery, and that good man Gerritt Smith thought government should have nothing to do with the education of children; that it is altogether a private function and can not be usurped by the state without serious injury to those most nearly interested.

While, however, doctrinaires have been groping for the scientific boundary, government has gone forward experimentally, with no chart but experience, sometimes right and sometimes wrong, no doubt, in its endeavors to follow the line of least resistance and do that which seemed likely to promote the general welfare.

Granting the evident natural law that development is the result of activity of faculty, and, as a consequence, that individual improvement must come from individual exertion, it may be safe to say that the scope of government should be such as to give or permit the greatest normal and harmonious activity to the units of population, in order to bring about the greatest amount of aggregate excellence and happiness; and still it appears to be a matter of experience and experiment, in which science and altruism play but a subordinate part. Nevertheless, there should be investigation of governmental experiments, and the great and ever recurring question is, What do these show?

Has government help promoted individual competence, and has it promoted the general welfare? In answering this question it will not do to look at it as a whole; each experiment must be taken by itself, and there must be an elimination, so far as may be, of complicating and conflicting elements. Of course there will be no attempt in this paper to do more than report upon a single phase of government help, and one, too, which to my knowledge has never been utilized for throwing light upon the great economic question. I refer to the settlement of Oregon and Washington under government auspices. It would seem as though there never existed more favorable conditions for a successful experiment in planting a model colony than were found here upon this Northwest coast. Certainly nature was lavish and the government munificent, and if these are chiefly instrumental in putting a community on its feet to stay, here should be found the living proof. Let us see; and first as to the country.

The Cascade range of mountains, a high ridge bearing north and south, nearly parallel to the eastern shore of the Pacific Ocean and about one hundred miles therefrom, divides the states of Oregon and Washington into two unequal parts, popularly known as Eastern and Western Oregon and Washington. Bordering the coast of both states is another ridge, much lower, and between these two mountain ridges, are cross mountains connecting them, and forming valleys with independent river systems. These western valleys are but little above the sea level, have moist, equable climates, abundant timber, and rich soils; while the country east of the Cascades is an elevated table-land, sparsely wooded, quite arid, is subject to greater extremes of heat and cold and possessed of a strongly alkaline soil.

It is to the western valleys I wish to refer in this connection, as in these the donation land law chiefly operated until its expiration in the year 1855. Under that law every adult male citizen and his wife, immigrating to this coast before the year 1851, were entitled to six hundred and forty acres of land selected by the donees in such shape as they chose, and those coming after that time, were entitled to three hundred and twenty acres taken by legal subdivisions. Never before or since have such magnificent inducements been offered to settlers, and by the close of the year 1855 nearly all of the good lands in the Willamette, Umpqua, and Rogue River valleys were occupied by the donees who came from every State in the Union, but chiefly from the Mississippi Valley.

Saying that these lands were taken by families, in section and half-section tracts, gives but a faint idea of what was acquired. Doctor Johnson's description of the happy valley in Rasselas would be rather too poetical to adopt for this country, as this is too far north for people to depend upon the spontaneous productions of the earth, but in many respects there is much similarity. The great Doctor's fancy had not been expanded and enlightened by the vast accomplishments of modern science and invention, whereby the forces of nature have been utilized, and, as a consequence, his happy valley was constructed more to gratify an indolent and dreamy æstheticism than to promote economic industry.

In these western valleys, however, is everything that should stimulate men to the use of all their faculties, if steady and sure returns for exertion are better than unearned gratification of human wants and desires. Let the reader picture to himself an evergreen valley one hundred and fifty miles long and forty miles wide, a navigable river running the whole length, through its middle, with numerous branches on each side, the smaller rising in the foothills, the larger emerging from the forest covered mountains, the rich agricultural surface of the valley interspersed with timber and prairie in profitable proportions, and rising in gentle hills, among which are innumerable springs of pure, soft water, or subsiding into lowlands, here and there dotted by buttes, and he has the Willamette Valley, said by Saxe of Vermont to be the best poor man's country on the globe. This picture does not represent all its advantages by any means.

Probably no farming country known has water power so abundant and diffused as here. Niagara is unrivaled for power, but the principal question there is one of distribution. Here the problem of distribution is reduced to small proportions, for no village or city is far away from water power.

The Cascade Mountains, through their whole extent, are resonant with the clamorings of unused force, and likely, in their dark fir forests will first be realized Edison's dreams of the application of electric power,—trees felled, cut into saw logs and conveyed to the mill, with little of man's help except intelligent superintendence.

To be sure the first settlers of Oregon had no such anticipations as these, but they were not slow to perceive the advantages everywhere around them; sawmills were erected in advance of the great bulk of the immigration, so that immigrants were not required to go through the experience of the first settlers of Ohio and Indiana, housing one or two generations in log cabins.

No description of soil or surface or scenery can give an adequate presentation of this country, as upon the climate depends nearly everything which makes it, pre-eminently, a never failing supplier of man's wants. In this latitude, countries east of the Rocky Mountains have long cold winters and short hot summers, while west of the Cascades no such extremes are ever known.

The Kuro-shiwo of Japan, a broad, deep, and warm current of ocean water flows along our western shore, tempering the mountain air and covering the valleys with perpetual verdure. At this writing, the twenty-fifth of January, the fields have been once whitened with snow, cattle are pasturing upon unfrosted grass, and wild daisies are in bloom. Occasionally a cold wave from the north pushes seaward the tropical warmth, when for a few days the inhabitants get a mitigated sample of the arctic regions, but such incursions are few and far between,—say once in ten years, and not to be compared with the winter climate of Idaho, Montana, or the Eastern States. So seldom and short are the periods, when the ground is frozen, that agriculture is continuous through the whole year. In every winter month plowing is done and grain sown.

In what country, between the parallels forty-two and forty-nine north latitude, would cattle live through the winter upon grass, which was the dependence of those who crossed the great plains to this coast in the days of the pioneer? Arriving in these western valleys during the months of September and October, their teams worn and impoverished, were turned out upon the prairies and by midwinter were fat enough for beef.

Such was the country and the climate of the west coast to which the immigrants came, a land flowing with milk (no honey), beautiful and grand beyond description, rich beyond expectation, healthful beyond comparison; its streams abounding with fish, and its mountains with game; a country where there has been no failure of crops, and where blizzards, hurricanes, and cyclones are unknown.

Now a few words as to the character of the people who settled it, and in this examination I shall try to steer clear of the poetry and romance which are beginning to dehumanize them. It is not necessary for the purpose of this paper to show that the pioneers were more moral or more intelligent than those they left in the enjoyment of the peace and comforts of well regulated society, but it is important to know that they were a fair average in all respects as human beings, and as this question can not be determined by a personal examination, we must resort to the environment they voluntarily chose, or, in other words, to the objects and conditions which impelled them to the undertaking. The indolent and cowardly are not attracted by dangers, and hence we infer that volunteers make better soldiers than conscripts, and this inference is borne out by experience. Enterprises of great danger, forlorn hopes, are not chosen by those who love ease and quiet pleasure, but by the courageous and venturesome; those who take pleasure in overcoming resistance, surmounting obstacles, and braving dangers. The former are inclined to remain upon the old homestead, under the protection of law and the restraining influence of conservative public opinion; the latter push for the frontier, with apparent relish for the kind of life found only on the fretful edge of civilization. Some have assumed, therefore, that the borders are chiefly peopled by the reckless and immoral, those who would not be subject to proper restraint in the older communities; such an assumption, however, is wide of the mark. Under our flag there are no penal colonies; people go where they choose to go, and the currents of population are determined by self-selection. Places of trial and danger are taken by those who are not dismayed by such incidents, and unless we are willing to admit that there is a necessary connection between courage and criminality—that the enterprising and resolute are as a consequence tinctured with immoral tendencies—we shall believe what is more reasonable and in full accord with our experience, that the manly virtues are quite compatible with the moral attributes. I lived on the frontier, the Platte Purchase in Missouri, right among the people who contributed in men and money to the invasion of Kansas a few years afterwards, and I must say that I never lived in a more hospitable and law-abiding community. The forceful faculties were more prominent than in New England, but for personal honor, honesty, and brotherly feeling it would compare favorably with any portion of the United States. I had left that country when the Kansas troubles began, and was somewhat puzzled to reconcile the doings of the Border Ruffians with the character of the people as I knew them, but when I considered that a large majority of them were from the South, and, being born to the institution of slavery, were inheritors of all that such a state of society implies, I ceased to wonder.

Notwithstanding the great advance in biological science, the human being is very much of an enigma, and, however well disposed he may be from natural endowment, we can not guess what he may do until his previous environment has been examined. Suppose John Brown had been born and raised in the South, and had read his Bible through Southern spectacles, and had heard the Word expounded by devout defenders of the patriarchal institution, would he not have been found praying and fighting with Stonewall Jackson when the time came for war?

A large proportion of the pioneers were from Missouri, and at the time of the adoption of our constitution, which submitted the question of slavery to a popular vote, much solicitude was felt by anti-slavery men as to the result. Argument and inquiry were on the wing, and there was eminent opportunity, not only to learn the opinions and wishes of men but how those opinions and wishes came to be formed. Some of the ablest and best advocates of a free state were from the South and some of those who voted to fasten the relic of barbarism upon this free soil were from the North. One solid, earnest, but uneducated free state man, born and raised in Kentucky, and a resident of Missouri for several years just before coming to the Oregon Territory, was asked as to the evolution of his opinion and answered "that when living in his native State, a doubt as to the rightfulness of slavery had never crossed his mind; that he regarded abolitionists the same as horse thieves, and would have meted out to them the same punishment; that when he got to northern Missouri, where there were but few slaves, he was struck with the difference he felt and saw, as respects social conditions; people were more on an equality; that conservative deference paid to slaveholders was conspicuous by its absence, and when he got to Oregon, the spirit of abolitionism was in the air." He thought that if the good people of Kentucky could experience what he had they would clear slavery from that state in a year. I was intimately acquainted with that man for thirty years, and I am confident that I never saw one more honest and truthful, or one more ready to assist in reforms or more willing to be informed. Ignorance was his sin, as it was of the majority of those subject to the malign influence of slavery, and yet in his native State he was a possible border ruffian. What an honest, earnest man believes to be right he will defend, and for his convictions there is always a higher law to which he will appeal, notwithstanding the limitations of statutes and constitutions.

Though a Webster might lose himself in adoration of the Federal Union and an Everett offer up his mother a living sacrifice to preserve it, it is to the credit of human nature that human rights, human interests, human convictions and affections stand nearer and dearer to the people than any mere machinery of human government. The abolitionists believed the Constitution of the United States was a covenant with Death and a league with Hell, and they protested with all their soul and strength; to those Southerners reared to believe in the divinity of slavery, the Constitution was a worthless rag, for it did not protect them in their supposed rights. To the men of earnest convictions on both sides we owe our present disenthrallment.

The foregoing apparent digression has been indulged for the reason that the Oregon people were severely criticised and denounced in connection with our Indian wars, spoilation claims, and the votes cast in favor of slavery upon the adoption of our free constitution; and also for the reason that the aspect of character has a sociological bearing.

Advanced evolutionists include with their scientific shibboleth, "the survival of the fittest," an ethical element, when applied to civilized society. The early settlements here were singularly free from transgressors. There was no criminal code and no courts of law up to the time of the provisional government. Every man was a law unto himself, and it is said there was no offense against person or property of sufficient importance to require them. These were halcyon days, often referred to by old Oregonians, who say that crime and criminals were unknown until society was put under the tantalizing reign of law. I have heard not a few, in referring to the good old times, express the opinion that mankind are governed too much by statute and thereby released, in a great degree, from moral restraint.

There is occasionally an old settler so impressed with pioneer equality, fraternity, and purity, that he lays all subsequent social disturbance to the provoking interference of legal machinery with natural rights, and he longs "for a lodge in some vast wilderness" where he can end his days in peace, away from penalties and penal institutions and the temptations which civil government offers to the predatory instincts of men.

Such logical metonomy is not mentioned here except to show that the pioneers were lovers of peace and good order, and fully subject to enlightened moral restraint. As before mentioned, they were peculiar in one respect, that is, in the possession of a large share of the executive or heroic qualities.

The Great American Desert, with its sand stretches, waterless wastes, unbridged rivers, Rocky Mountains, and predatory savages, loomed up deterrently to the spiritless. A four to six months' journey in wagons, exposed to all the vicissitudes of travel and climate and the forays of more dreadful foes, ever on the alert to dispossess travelers of their only means of conveyance, was not to be considered a pleasure trip.

No doubt that to a certain but undefinable extent and in numerous ways, the circumstances and incidents to be expected on the overland journey were selective, and yet the Oregon Pioneer, as pictured by his eulogists, is rather a fanciful personage. Not that the incidents from which the picture is drawn are to any unusual degree false, but that there is too much of the commonplace left out, and so the typical pioneer, like the typical Yankee, is a caricature. The pioneers, as a body, were only a little different from those who were too affectionate or diffident to start, and among them were all sorts of people; but looking only to those who endured extraordinary privations, to those who developed an uncommon degree of strength, courage, and virtue, there have grown up the poetry and romance of the pioneers, and to none is this more evident than the pioneers themselves. At one of their annual gatherings, when an eloquent speaker was narrating the trying incidents of the overland journey, one of the earlier immigrants inquisitively remarked "I wonder if I ever crossed the plains?" I was querying the same; still we must not neglect to state that the speaker was dealing in facts. He was leaving out so much that those who had passed the ordeal wondered if they had ever been there. Indeed, the speakers and writers who have been called to the task of perpetuating pioneer history have had the usual inducements to false coloring, which has been the curse of all history in all times.

Striking incidents, battles, sieges, marches, insurrections, revolutions, and the leading actors in them, of such is the warp and woof of history, until man is understood to be a mere fighting animal, although the greater part of his life has been spent in peaceful avocations and the greater exertion of his force and faculties has been devoted to constructive industry.

Out of such partiality has inevitably grown the great man theory of human progression. The student of history passes along from point to point in the bloody trail of the historian, stopping at such characters as Alexander, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Napoleon, etc., until these great destroyers are looked upon as the prime factors of the evolutionary state. Of course, these and such as these must not be ignored or left out, for history would cease to be history without them, but it is equally important to know that man, judged only by them, ceases to be man. Of late an improved philosophy of history assigns them their proper place and significance as an index of evolution, and gives us the hopeful sign that notwithstanding the occasional irruption of man's destructive faculties, his progress is principally due to the subordination of the militant spirit. And now, while the principal part of our early history, territorial and state, is devoted to our really insignificant Indian wars and the principal characters on both sides, it is well enough to think that the greater constructive works of peace have been going forward with hardly a halt, and the more sober tints are yet to be given the picture of early Oregon times.

With such coloring as we now have of pioneer life and the passage of the great plains, posterity will wonder, as did the pioneer before quoted, if the pioneers ever did cross, and also what kind of people they must have been to undertake, with such slender means, so perilous a journey. Samuel R. Thurston, Oregon's first delegate under the Territorial Government, advertised his constituents as "fellows who could whip their weight in wildcats," very good electioneering taffy, no doubt, but rather strong and really degrading language to apply to the earnest men and women who so patiently toiled to the Northwest coast.

Of a higher type and tone was the poetical exaggeration "only the brave started, only the strong got through." The facts are different. Some arrant cowards and many more physically weak persons, by some sufficient means, found their way here. The emigrant train was not a forlorn hope; no such test was made for membership. Neither was it a test of patriotism; albeit every citizen is a quixotic propagator of his republican faith. Various were the inducements in the minds of those who left the older states for the Pacific Slope. Many, like ex-Senator Nesmith, did not really know, as they had no well defined purpose, but might answer in his language, and with probable truth, that they were "impelled by a vague spirit of adventure." Restless spirits are always ready for any move, promising unusual scope for the exercise of their faculties. Many were along to enjoy the exhilaration of travel, in a new, strange, and truly wonderful country. Many, long wasted by the miasmatic fevers of the overrich and productive Mississippi Valley, sought immunity in the untainted mountain air of the Far West. A few of the Daniel Boone stripe were too much crowded where inhabitants exceeded one to the square mile, and took one more move with the hope that the hum drum of civilization would never overtake them. A few of a poetical turn of mind, tired of the monotony of the greater East, sought fresh inspiration and a home upon the picturesque shores of the sunset seas.

But while all of the foregoing and many other inducements might have been present in varying degree, the great incentive to immigration was free land. Not only land for the landless, but land for all, and in unstinted quantity. The scenes at Oklahoma divest the emigration to Oregon of all mystery, and while there was probably small difference in kind or degree of virtue between those who came and those who remained, of one fact pioneers are cognizant, namely, that the incidents and trials of the overland journey were a wonderful developer and equalizer. The fictitious gloss of so-called society was abraded, and the shams of character in which human beings had invested themselves, like weakly oxen, were left on the road. Everywhere this is observable, and it is often remarked that the true pioneer is never afterward subject to an undue self-inflation. It seems as though a few months' practice of sincere brotherhood is fatal to an offensive amount of arrogance and egotism.

Now let us inquire as to the use and the tenacity of hold the pioneers had for their unbought possessions. There was no sign of indolence on their part upon arriving. The same pushing qualities which enabled them to surmount all difficulties in getting here were not wanting when homes were to be made and farms to be cultivated. To all appearances the older community, with an infusion of vigor born of success and adventure, had been transplanted upon virgin soil. Of necessity population was sparse. In large districts, principally settled by immigrants before 1851, there was but one family to the square mile, and in other portions were those arriving afterwards and settling two to the square mile. In this way a few people cover, or rather appropriate, a large country, and their improvements, though considerable, appear very meager. Every thing, however, was at hand; rail timber ten cuts to the tree; cedar for shingles and shakes; poles straight enough for rafters without hewing, and fir trees, seemingly grown for the special purpose of house frames. The soil was favorable. Though producing a good growth of the most nutritious native grass, it was easily plowed, two good horses being sufficient to turn over two acres of sod in a day, and, unlike the sward in other countries, was mellow from the first harrowing. Many a family coming as late as October plowed and fenced forty acres and raised from twelve hundred to sixteen hundred bushels of wheat the next harvest, working their cattle that hauled them across the plains and feeding them nothing but the bunch grass upon which they pastured through the winter months.

After the discovery of gold in California, the market for all farm products was at almost every man's door and at marvelous prices. Butter from fifty cents to a dollar a pound; bacon from twenty-five to fifty cents a pound; chickens from $5 to $10 per dozen; eggs from twenty-five to fifty cents per dozen; sheep from $5 to $12 per head; cows, $50; horses, $200; oxen from $100 to $200 per yoke; wheat from $1 to $7 per bushel, and labor from $2 to $5 per day. Of course, such prices gradually wore down, but the opportunity for large profits in farming and stock raising continued for a quarter of a century. Our public disbursements, however, were not on the same scale. Up to the year 1859 Uncle Sam paid a good share of the governmental expenses, and at that time our state government was organized under a constitution that has often been called parsimonious.

The sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections of each township, or lands in lieu thereof, were devoted by Congress to common schools; land was also given to found a state university and agricultural college, and five hundred thousand acres along with five per cent of the sales of public lands were given to an internal improvement fund to be used by the state. Add to this the swamp lands, amounting to several hundred thousand acres of the most valuable, all given without cost, and one might well ask, "in the name of common sense what more should a paternal government do for a people?" And yet it has done more. Coast defenses and lighthouses have been built, the rivers dredged, harbors improved, something near a million dollars appropriated to cut a canal around the cascade falls, and military roads and posts established to protect our inhabitants from the aborigines.

In common with all the other inhabitants of the United States, we have been suffering for the last few years from an aggravating increase of our great American industry, politics, but until the discovery was made, that people can grow rich by taxing themselves, the people of Oregon were contented with small levies for public purposes. Indeed, we have done little in the way of public improvements to create expense. With the exception of county roads, which are mainly ungraded dirt ways, and the bridging of streams, nothing of importance has been attempted.

In view of all the foregoing comes the sharp contrast of the present condition of the pioneers and their immediate descendants. In the absence of any reliable census reports, I have been obliged to rely upon regional inspection, taking a township here and there and tracing up the career of the first white inhabitants. For this purpose I have selected, for an average, one hundred square miles on the east side of the Willamette Valley, in Marion County, which contains the state capital, and an examination shows that sixty-six per cent of the donation claims have passed out of the possession of the donees and their descendants, another fifteen per cent are mortgaged for all they are worth, and for practical purposes may be considered as lost to them. Not more than fifteen per cent of the whole have been ordinarily successful in holding and improving a part of their possessions and are now free from debt. Only five of all of them have increased their holdings and are thrifty. Eighty-seven per cent held section claims, and it may be mentioned that the half-section claimants were more successful in holding their own, and add very much to the favorableness of this report. In the better part of this county, a hundred square miles in a body might be selected where the per cent of loss would be greater, but this was settled chiefly by French, Scotch, and English Canadians, mountain men and trappers of nomadic habits, who married Indian women of the whole or half-breed, and of whose descendants less is expected, as they are passionately fond of ardent spirits. A teetotaler of mixed blood would be a rare sight. Neighborly, clever people, of lax business habits, and of necessity trustful, they were soon beat out of their landed possessions. Probably in no American community has the credit system been so much in vogue as on this Northwest coast, and likely for the reason that in no other place are crops so sure, and certainly in no other place was a broad basis of credit so much at the disposal of debtors. A family with a section of land that produces unfailing crops at small cost, can get credit anywhere; and what a harvest it has been for merchants and middlemen in these western valleys until recently. Ah, man! you are, indeed, a wanting animal, one whose wants are ever multiplying and exacting. Only a few of the race are securely provident by immediate self-denial, and this truth applies equally to the pioneers, those resolute men and women—

The heads of families did not so readily depart from their early habits of economy, but the children soon reveled in their magnificent possessions. Girls and boys alike became semi-nomads, or properly speaking, fell into the ways of the baronial English or the planter class of the South. As a consequence of their newly found competence and leisure "they took to horse," and strange, what a fascination comes over a human being when he takes to horse. In truth, that boy who did not admire the splendid aboriginal equestrians of the Great Plains and get filled with the spirit of the wild and free, as he saw them scurrying along the mountain side or sweeping down into the valley with the speed of the wind; that boy must have been an unchangeable clodhopper or a born philosopher.

Very few of them escaped the uncivilizing contamination, and many a youth, fresh from an unfinished course at school, had his book education cut sadly short by bestriding a cayuse and becoming a practical cowboy. The infatuation was not confined to the boys. The girls, too, had as much fondness for the noble brute, and were as expert and graceful in his management. Some of them have ridden seventy-five miles in a day. As a means of social communication at that time it had no equal; and for stock raising and the round-up in such a country, the horseman was unapproachable. Still, with all such advantages, and they were many, which could have been turned into permanent profit, the cowboy generation, though having a "heap of fun," and no doubt genuine pleasure, let the earth slip from under his feet. How could it be otherwise? Who could deny them? A party of boys and girls on their favorite steeds, the former in leggings, bell spurs, and the graceful sirrapa; the latter in the freshness of physical beauty and bedecked with flowing skirts and scarlet streaming sash—when such a cavalcade went galloping over the prairies with a speed that put to shame a Sheridan's ride, what parent could or would deny them.

Well, the parents did not deny them this and other diversions from gainful industry, and, little by little, the princely donations of land went into the till of the shopkeeper or the safe of the money changer. Landless and moneyless, they scattered over the country, and, as it were, dropped into all kinds of callings. Many of them have gone east of the Cascades and taken homesteads and pre-emptions in the arid regions, and there upon the bunch grass lands have gained a living and some a competence by stock raising and wool growing. Others followed up the streams into the mountains and in some narrow valley made a home away from the every day temptations of the lowlanders. Others went to the coast. Many of the young have found ample success in other avocations and do not regret the loss of the parental donations. They are found on the bench, at the bar, in the pulpit, in the governmental employ, in college faculties, and in all honorable pursuits. Only a few have ignobly failed, and those few do not invalidate the maxim that "where there is a will there is a way" for falling into the drink habit they lost their wills.

In conclusion, I am not willing to assert that the policy of the general government, in donating land as a reward for taking possession of this Northwest coast, was not a wise policy or that it was an injury to the donees, though in the main they failed to keep the gift, but the lesson is none the less valuable; and what is it but a confirmation of the general truth that "necessity is the mother of invention," the spur to exertion, and that success in this life is to be obtained only through the school of experience as the reward of continued and temperate effort. As there is no royal road to knowledge so there is no royal road to wealth or any other valuable acquisition; and it is not proper to confine this edict of fate to mere material things, although to be fed and clothed is the first and most imperious demand of nature. Man in all of his successful undertakings is an evolutionary being. Whether intellectually, morally, or physically considered, he keeps best what he has produced, what he has earned. As a hard and fast donee, he is not a success; as a beggar, he is disgusting even to himself. Sometimes he needs charity, but always justice.